


By the Snake

by luvliv2004



Category: My Chemical Romance, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: Bandom - Freeform, Ghosts, Heavy Angst, M/M, Tcfsr, alternative music
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 06:42:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 62,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14207361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvliv2004/pseuds/luvliv2004
Summary: A young man is torn away from his lover too soon and will stop at nothing to put him to rest by reuniting with him. In doing so, he forms an alliance with the devil and the saint of death.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> This story is heavily inspired by Gerard Way’s explanation of the storyline of the Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge album. In no way am I claiming his ideas as my own, I just simply wanted to share my version of an existing story with the world. You guys know how it is. 
> 
> If you are sensitive to triggers, I recommend that you do not read this story. 
> 
> Enjoy :)

0

The consensus in the church was that every pew-sitter had problems causing the torture and malice in their hearts.

Aunt Cheryl had lost her house that she and her children had lived in for fifteen years. Some corporate lay-offs and a few late mortgage payments later, and she was met with an orange slip of paper spray-glued to her front door. She had moved her family into a hotel. They had eaten gas station hot dogs every day for the last week. She planned on filing bankruptcy the next day when the banks opened again. She’d also planned on sneaking into her boss’s house while he was asleep, standing over him in his bed, and holding a knife to his throat. She wouldn’t ask for her job back, she'd demand they find her a paycheck somewhere in their budget, and she’d go back to work the next Monday. Her daydreams held no veracity, of course, but at this point, the woman needed her revenge fantasies to keep her alive.

Cousin Tony hadn’t seen his kids in more than six months. He had scheduled visitations, but he was certain his ex-girlfriend had put their children in soccer on Wednesday’s, so they’d be too busy to spend time with him. He treasured his last memory of taking his daughters to the mall. He missed them asking him to braid their hair, them begging him to let him paint his nails. He would give anything to get things back to normal; his freedom included. Tony found very little to keep him from driving to his ex’s house and kidnapping his kids. He’d use their passports from their Mexican vacation and take them across the border. He’d face an arrest, but he’d do it in the name of love. 

Frank Sr. and Linda lost their son. The soon-to-be pre-law graduate was gunned down. They didn’t know the specifics yet. All that mattered was Frank Jr. and his roommate had both been shot while walking down a San Bernardino sidewalk. By the time the police had been called, Frank was gone, and the roommate had been close to bleeding out, himself. Linda sat in the pews crying into her husband’s lapels, asking herself why Gerard had been lucky enough to live; why his bullet hadn’t gone deep enough. 

Gerard sat in the back pew of the church, mourning the death of his dear roommate. He rubbed at the bandages around his waist, encasing his healing gunshot wound. His doctor advised him not to leave the hospital, as any strenuous activity might have caused his stitches to reopen or internal bleeding, but that didn’t factor in his decision to be there. The poor man had been less than forty-eight hours out of his second surgery. His stomach was still swollen, and with every step, a shooting pain would tickle its way up his spine. He still found himself in attendance of Frank’s funeral. He wouldn’t miss it to save his life.

I

It had only been a few days before when he and Frank had been walking home from the movie theater. They had taken a risk by going to the cheapy theater on Al St, but it had been two months since Dawn of the Dead had come out, and if they hadn’t seen the movie that night, they would have had to wait a few more months before it would be at Blockbuster. 

Gerard wore his stomping boots and his blue jeans that weren’t as tight as he might like them to be. They put Frank at ease that he could move comfortably. Frank adorned his horror-movie-red eye shadow that always got him in the right frame of mind to watch corpses being shot to bits by frantic people who are moments away from being turned into corpses themselves.

On their way home, they strolled down the pavement. Gerard held a half-empty ICEE cup, sucking at his straw sparsely. The cool air filling his mouth between sips teased the roof of his mouth. If his mother had been there, she would have warned that he would get sick after drinking such a drink in the cold of the night. 

The street had been consistently void of people, and the pink neon lights casting themselves onto the block only added to the ambiance. “Cherry Bomb.” Gerard read, “Open from sun-up to sun-down.” He chuckled and wondered if the girls would turn into vampire lizards if he tipped them enough.

Frank walked with his hands in his sweater pocket. He wore a pair of gloves to keep the tips of his fingers from going numb, just like Gerard had reminded him to. Frank had family on the east coast, and they would laugh at him for taking such precautions in the 57-degree weather. They called him, “Cali-Boy,” and he’d get defensive. He felt as if being acclimated to live in colder temperatures would make him tougher--as if that mattered in his life. His east coast family taught him that being used to the cold did not make you a better person. With every step, he fiddled his thumbs, causing a noticeable movement in the pocket of his hoodie. His joey pouch hung down to his crotch from the weight of his hands. Gerard snickered at the sight. 

He widened his eyes at Frank’s piercing hole in his lip. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed Frank had taken out his lip ring. It didn’t bother him. The jewelry got in the way of things. 

“That was a good movie, wasn’t it?” Frank broke the silence. 

“Yeah. It was alright.” Gerard wiped the inner corner of his lips. “The original was better.” 

“The original is always better with you cinema sluts!” Frank joked.

“Hey!” Gerard laughed in embarrassment at being called a slut. 

"What about the scene with the baby? You had to have been amused by that! Or-or that fucking Disturbed cover! I saw you cracking up to that shit."

They turned the corner of the block. The only other person on the sidewalk was a homeless woman sitting up against the old building. Frank watched her as she pulled out a needle and a small plastic bag or heroin. It scared him to know that such harsh drugs existed in his school-town. It scared him more than any zombie could. He turned his petrified eyes away.

They watched each other in their peripheral vision. It didn’t even occur to them that they had been walking through troughs of garbage that had been spilled out in the streets, or that about a dozen hookers had their breasts pushed up against the glass of the nudie bar windows, ready to be sold off. If he would have been paying attention, Gerard would have realized—as tempting as they were—he would take Frank over any of those women. Simply by looking at Frank, Gerard grew a smile. He giggled when Frank returned the favor. 

“What?” Frank squealed. 

“Nothing. You’re just so irresistible. Ya know?”

“Nah. I don’t know.”

Gerard sighed. “I wish you did.” He stooped down and embraced Frank’s lips with his own. 

“I’m not all that great.” Frank breathed into Gerard’s mouth as they turned again at the crosswalk. 

“Yeah, you fucking are.” They stopped in the street. “How can you not see how perfect you are. Perfect!” He sang.

“Stop it.” Frank held the sides of his arms. “You’re being gross.”

“For complimenting the love of my life? For trying to prove to him just how much I love him?” 

“Fuck yeah! That shit is nasty.” Frank couldn’t help but laugh as he pulled Gerard by the sleeves of his sweater and seeded a kiss onto his lips again. Gerard chuckled in their embrace, flinching as he felt Frank’s hand graze the back of his neck. 

His hand became more than a bundle of cold fingers. Suddenly, they had become a concentrated spot on the back of his neck. He looked straight into Frank’s closed eyes and down at his hands, both of which were still grabbing at his jacket. 

His hand cocked itself.

“Chill out.” The unfamiliar voice ordered. “Get the fuck off each other.” 

Frank separated his lips from Gerard for the last time with the same resistance as Velcro. Gerard didn’t dare turn around with the gun to his head. All he could see was that the expression on Frank’s face was more in exasperation than in fear. That was what scared him the most.

“Put your hands up, and you, turn around.” He commanded, lifting his gun off Gerard. He turned around slow enough to not anger the man, but fast enough to not let the man have an advantage over him. “Have the advantage over me?” Gerard thought, “He’s got a gun to my brains, that’s a fuck of an advantage if I’ve ever seen one.” He dropped his ICEE as he raised his hands in the air. He could have sworn one of the women in the window made eye contact with him. She did nothing. 

“It’s gonna be real simple.” The man said as he put his gun at his side. “You’re just gonna give me everything on you. That’s all. I’ll leave after that.”

Gerard complied, reaching in his back pocket for his wallet. Frank put down his hands. “The fuck we will!” He yelled at the man. Gerard let out a rickety sigh. He hadn’t even noticed he had begun to cry, he was that scared. 

“Excuse me, sodomite?” He drew his weapon on him faster than Gerard could jump in front of him. He held his wallet in one hand and blocked Frank with his other arm.

“Here.” Gerard threw his wallet at the man. “Frank, give him your fucking wallet.” There was anger and fear and almost pride in Gerard’s dead-on gaze into Frank’s eyes. Frank met him back with a snarl, yet he still reached for his wallet. 

The man bent over to pick up Gerard’s wallet as Frank held his out in front of him. Gerard backed away at his submission. 

Frank laughed. “I’ll give you my wallet,” The man stood up again, “when you drop dead.” Gerard cried out when he heard what Frank had said, and before he could beg him to hand it over again, he heard a bang. Then two more, and once he had processed everything that had happened, Frank was on the floor, and the man had been running down the street with all of their possessions. 

He stumbled over to Frank’s side, falling to his knees once he had seen the blood leaking from Frank’s head. He hadn’t even had time to console Frank before he himself had tumbled beside his slain lover. All Gerard could do was gape at the pool of blood that grew under his head. The mere sight of Frank’s brains scattered about the sidewalk infuriated him. Under the screaming of the women in the windows he could hear a sort of sputtering sound coming from Frank; like words he couldn’t form. The way Frank’s arms hung limply on the hinge of his shoulders crushed him.

“Frank!” He screamed as he grabbed at his own side. He held his hand up to his face and saw his blood covering it. Through the vibrations in the ground, he could feel the girls running to help them. 

“Frank! No. Shit! Shit! Shit.” He kicked at him with his leg, only to discover he had been shot in the calf when the pain radiated through his body. “No!” He cried as he saw a group of strippers crowding around him, some completely naked, standing right over him. He felt one of the girls pressing on his wound.

“Soni! What the fuck are you doing? You’re gonna contaminate the crime scene!” Another girl called.

“I saw it on a TV show! I’m tryin’ ta, stop the bleedin’, ya know?” Gerard could feel her acrylic nails through his sweater.

“Leave me—Suh-save Frank.” He could feel himself going cold and his hands getting numb. As long as Frank was okay— that was his dying wish. 

“I’m sorry baby, Frank’s dead.” Another girl explained. Gerard had passed out. He got lost in her black hair that dangled over him and threatened to touch his face had she leaned down any further. 

“My God. We’re losin’ him! Delilah, call Tito!”

II

Frank’s problem: His casket was too long. No one could tell. Only the upper door of his casket was open, leaving his legs covered. Thank the lord. He’d hate to see his mother crying in shame about the only humorous thing at his funeral. He’d also hate to see he had had an open casket funeral. Of course, his mother would ignore his premortal requests of being cremated, as jokingly as it had been said. It would have gone to show Frank how his own mother would put her wishes over those of her dead son’s. If he were alive, he would have been embarrassed: Embarrassed because nearly everyone in his family made time to put their problems aside so they could all cry over his embalmed, patched-up, yet still ghastly-looking corpse. They attempted to cover what was left of his mouth in a red kerchief, but everyone knew what laid under. Had he known Gerard was there in the church, he might have felt a little better. 

Linda let out a great cry as she met her leaking eye with the folded edge of her handkerchief. Frank Sr. comforted her with his arm. The same arm he used to build helicopters with in San Diego. 

With the most unfortunate timing ever, the priest ended his sermon. “Now, at last, Frank’s spirit will fly into God’s arms like the gentle little dove he always was. At this time, anyone who has a few words to say about Frank may do so.” He stepped down from the podium with a look of despair set deep in his eyes. This was his first funeral for anyone under the age of fifty in a year. 

His mother was too emotional to stand, let alone to say something, and his father was too busy consoling her. Everyone else in the pews knew that one of their words only held a tenth of the value of a single word from the parents. It wasn’t their place to speak. They had all lived up north, hours away from the Ieros. They probably hadn’t seen Frankie Jr. since he was in diapers. No one else in the room shared the same connection with Frank that Gerard did. 

So, placing nearly all of his weight on the hand he rested on the headrest of a pew, he stood up. The pain rang in his ear louder than the organ music that had played as everyone had walked in. Louder than the choir they had rented to serenade Frank’s body. He nearly fell over at the sound. He threw his leg over the edge and stepped as if he was an old man with hip dysplasia. 

Every eye in the church was on him— the man who couldn’t stand up properly. The man who looked like hell. The man who was there when it happened. The man who shouldn’t be here.

As he walked into the aisle, he grabbed his cane. With every step, he felt as if he was going to faint. It didn’t faze him though. He would walk down that aisle and say some words if it meant his stitches were going to rip open. It didn’t faze him that he was still a bit high on morphine, or that his eyes were bright pink from exhaustion, or that his mouth puckered in a way that made him look like he was about to vomit. 

He counted the stained-glass windows as he walked up from all the way in the back of the church. The images gave him comfort and distracted him from everyone who was still staring at him in confusion. He had never met anyone in the church before. The only way he found out that Frank was having a funeral was from the police officer who had interviewed him the day before. It didn’t seem likely he would have been invited if he hadn’t just shown up as he had. That certainty could be felt in the thurible-scented air. 

His shoes made loud thuds on the wooden floor of the front of the church—louder than he might have liked. As he stepped on the dais, he walked up to Frank’s casket. If he had thought Frank was pale while he was alive, his past self should have seen him now. There was a reason they had terms like, “dead-pale.” He wouldn’t dare touch Frank’s body, as bad as he wanted to: just to run his hands through his hair, or to wrap his hand around his arm for even a second. 

He turned away, letting his wants escape him, tapping his shaking finger on the head of the microphone. “Hello,” he began, “Uh, my name is Gerard Way. And I Uh, I— none of you know me. I know none of you. But, I was a friend of Frank’s from school. I’s ah-actually his roommate, and I, wuh-was there when he passed.” Everyone else but Frank’s parents let out a gasp. “I was the last person Frank saw before he died— before he was shot. Before we were shot. Uh, if you couldn’t tell, I’ve ignored a lot of doctors’ orders to be here right now, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I luh— I was so close to Frank. He was my emergency contact at work.” His voice began to crack. “I dunno what else to say. Just, know— if I could trade my life for his,” A tear emerged from his eye, “I would do it in a heartbeat, 'cuz he would have made a better lawyer than me— any day.” He stepped down from the podium a last time, hobbling even more than he had the first time. 

The air was awkward. Gerard could see one man with nothing but hate in his eyes. He felt if he were to stay any longer, he would kill him; finish the job just like he had asked. No one shared a sympathetic gaze with Gerard as he made his way to the back of the church. No one moved a muscle as he almost tripped on the rug, or as his shame-ridden sniffles reflected about the walls. It was only after he was outside and had left with the clash of the church doors a member of the Iero family dared to give a eulogy without fear of intruders.

Gerard made his way down the steps of the cathedral, one at a time, feeling the drugs wearing off with every misplaced foot. He reached into his pocket, only to find his wallet had been missing, of course. He was alone, had no money, and was 5 miles away from their apartment—his apartment, now. So, with no other way to hail a taxi and a refusal to hitchhike, Gerard stumbled home on a bum leg and a cane. 

The entire walk home, he remembered Linda’s eyes on him. Even in their glossy, emotional state, they managed to cut a hole right through him. She and Frank Sr. really had it out for him as he gave his speech. He just didn’t know why. Like it had been his fault he didn’t die out on the pavement. Like he had a choice in getting shot. Like he was okay with Frank being dead.

III

That night, Gerard had tried every trick up his sleeve to lull himself to sleep. He left Frank’s spot open on their bed as if Frank had gotten up to use the bathroom and just hadn’t come back yet. It wasn’t safe without Frank lying next to him. 

He laid there with his eyes shut so tight. Tight enough to keep out anything that wasn’t the darkness he had created in closing his eyes. Tight enough so no glimmer of moonlight could expose Frank’s radiant face Gerard had wished would be there if he were to look.

There was something comforting about his own darkness Gerard recognized. As long as anything he saw in the dark was his own, he knew it wasn’t real. If he saw the oily forehead of the hobgoblin hiding underneath his imagined desk in his own darkness, he didn’t have to be scared because it only existed in his mind. All he had to do was open his eyes, and it would all be gone. 

As often as he did see things in his darkness, today was a rather static night. The only thing Gerard could see in the projection on his eyelids was a pure black canvas. Not even the whimsical mandalas of blue and green that often decorated the slate that had appeared. It was so unfamiliar to him. 

Maybe, that was what it was like for Frank, only Frank would be too dead to recognize what he was seeing—only Frank wouldn’t see anything at all, because he doesn’t exist anymore. It occurred to Gerard that he would die too, and it terrified him. 

The pain of it all. Not being able to think, or to simply be. The realization caused him to cry out into his pillow so no one, not even he himself could hear. But he heard. He heard his own scream, and it scared him even more. It made him feel pathetic that he couldn’t do anything about his own death, as distant and as irrelevant as it seemed. 

He hiccupped with breath as his pulse quickened, and he began to hyperventilate. He squealed and chirped in fear: Existential fear that arose as a result of the grief process. 

Gerard couldn’t remember a time when he had felt so afraid of dying, yet so unwilling to live at the same time. His brush with death would prove to change his outlook on the afterlife. 

IV

What woke Gerard in the morning was the pounding on the door of his apartment. He was so shocked he had even been able to fall asleep the previous night that the sudden flash of sunlight coming from the window when he opened his eyes startled him. It was an angry banging on the door that shook the walls hard enough to make his bedside table rattle as he tried to stash his bottles of pain meds in his drawers before answering the door. 

“Coming!” He shouted as he took his first step out of bed. He groaned in pain. The knocking seized as he made his way to his cane. He didn’t even bother with his robe or fixing his hair, which he knew had been a mess. 

On the other side of the door stood Linda and Frank Sr., both holding their coats with their arms crossed. 

Frank Sr. sighed in relief, “Good. We have the right address!” 

Linda elbowed his arm. She straightened her posture and cleared her throat, conjuring all of the courage in her body. “Good morning, Justin. We’re leaving for San Diego this afternoon and have come to take all of Frank’s belongings.”

Gerard didn’t even know what to say. Now he knew why Frank never wanted him to meet his parents. The amount of disregard Frank’s mother had shown to him that morning sent a ripple of disgust through his mind. He hated how patronized Linda made him feel; The way she purposefully forgot his name; The way Frank Sr. just stood at her side as if he was allowing his wife to be a bitch like it was a step in the grief process. He wanted nothing more than to slam the door in their faces and send them on her merry way down south.

“Uh, sure.” He allowed, stepping out of the way of the door, opening it enough for both of them to enter. Linda bustled in, with her husband following her like a dog. Even if Gerard wasn't doped up on pain meds, he still would have been able to see the tight leash that woman had around his neck.

“Show us to his room.” She nearly sneered at Gerard. 

He lead them to their room, his nose running from nearly crying in belittlement. He didn't need this.

As he cracked open the door, the unwashed smell of the room wafted in his face. Now, not only did he feel depreciated, but also embarrassed because of his room’s poor hygiene. “His clothes are in the closet, he's got some decorations on the wall, and his backpack in the corner.” He sat on the edge of his bed allowing the couple to raid his closet.

Frank Sr. merely stood in the center of the room as Linda gathered all of Frank’s things in the bag she had brought with her. “You okay, son?” He asked Gerard. 

Gerard nodded. It was a lie.

“How many times were you hit?”

“Twice.” Gerard wheezed.

Frank Sr. hissed. “I took a bullet to the leg in Japan back in ‘83. It was the worst pain I'd ever felt in my life. Funny story actually: Me and my airedales were in this joint in the Honch, and there was this JN who was showing me his 22 cal, and then he showed me the hare trigger he had installed, and the goddamn thing went off. Clipped me right in the goddamn calf.” Gerard wasn't sure if he was supposed to feel bad for him. The sound of Linda frantically shoveling clothes into her bag startled him. “I thank God it wasn't a lethal sho—” 

Linda slammed the sliding closet door on its rolling track. She stomped her heels all the way to the dresser, making Gerard jump after her. 

“Wait! Those are my clothes.” He reached out for her in his stationary stance as she opened the drawer. 

She scoffed. “Your clothes?! What are your clothes doing in my son’s room?” She was more furious than confused or curious. 

It all fit together in Frank Sr.’s head. He didn't see anything outright wrong about it. It brought him back to the mid-eighties when one of his underlings was beaten to near death in one of the locker rooms on the boat. A dishonorable discharge was given to him as he recovered in the hospital, and he was sent back to Virginia. He could tell Gerard was daunted and finally saw all of the lines his wife was crossing. 

“Are you just that haphazard of a person that you needed to house your belongings in my son’s room?” She began throwing fistfuls of Gerard’s clothes to the floor. “Can't you move this to your room later or—” 

“Linda!” Frank Sr. had had it with her. “That's enough! This is his room too!”

Linda stood there with her mouth gaping wide open. She bent over, the expression on her face changing to tire and exhaustion as she picked up her bag. She swung it over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes almost knocking over a photograph on the dresser. If the room wasn’t floored with carpet, Linda’s shoes would have made an outrageously loud noise as she walked out. Frank Sr. followed her.

Even with his heart beating in his ears, he could hear the opening of the front door and the whispers from Frank Sr. 

“You know what Justin?” Linda screeched, “I heard your little speech yesterday. And I agree with everything you said.” The door slammed behind her.

The memory of his speech from the day before shot its way into Gerard’s head. He remembered how vulnerable he had made himself in front of all of those strangers, how open he tried to be with them, how everyone dismissed him as the one that survived. Then he remembered what he had actually said.

“If I could trade my life for his, I would do it in a heartbeat… he would have made a better lawyer than me— any day.”

V

The rest of the day went by in a blur. He had grown so tired from all of the emotions of the morning, and the only thing he could do was lay in his bed and attempt to heal himself. It would only be a matter of time before he would have to go back to school, and he knew he needed to get as much rest as possible before he would resume his study of the law. 

Though it had felt like he had just woken up, Gerard felt his head drawn to his pillow; an irresistible urge to close his eyes and sleep. The rainstorm from the previous day had given all of San Bernardino a grey-tinged sky with clouds that threatened to cry again, so there was no need for Gerard to sleep with his fan on. Alternatively, he found himself in the cradle of his old comforter. This was the first time he was ever able to pull the entire blanket around himself seeing as there was no Frank to share it with.

Even with the sting of pain in his heart and in his mind, and the wounds on his body, the one thing giving him peace of mind was the feeling of his loose socks on his feet. He had always hated his toes, and he loved the feeling of security when he woke up in the middle of the night and his feet weren’t cold. Seeing as this had been one of those frequent occasions, his socks had helped rock him back to sleep. 

But for some reason, that night it hadn’t been enough. He still found himself tossing and turning to the silence of his room. Every time he would settle in a new position, he’d subject himself to the discomforts of his contusions. Then, when the pain was gone, he’d find something too distracting to let him sleep. He’d heard his heartbeat too loud in his ears. He could feel his lung muscles creaking up and down as he breathed. The dog the neighbors were not supposed to have was barking its head off. 

He screamed out as he sat up and threw his blankets off himself. “Fuck!” He stood up and hobbled around his room, pacing from one wall to the other. “Fuck me!” It was all too much. Standing up too quickly had caused him to become light headed, and in attempts to prevent himself from falling over, he braced himself over his dresser. 

He looked up into the mirror in front of himself, but his vision had blacked out partially, and he couldn’t even make out his own face. He spread his feet out on the floor in order to give himself better balance, and by the time he looked back up again, his woozy spell had passed. 

Once the black had dissolved in his eyes, all he could see before him on the dresser was Frank’s old record player he had bought at a yard sale. With the scant amount of light coming through the window, he could barely read the peeling sticker on the record sat under the needle: The Very Best of Paul Anka. 

With the gentlest touch he could muster, Gerard readjusted the needle to the first song, and turned the volume dial all the way to the maximum. Just before he jumped back into bed, he flicked the switch to “on,” then buried himself in his comforter.

The anticipation alone from waiting for the scratching that signified the music was about to start made Gerard’s heart beat even louder, and after what seemed like a lifetime, his internal drum was drowned out by the sickeningly sweet bends of an electric guitar. 

Out in front of him he saw the dark outline of his closet door with its sliding door cracked open just a tad. As the words of the song began, “Put your head on my shoulders…” he saw a streak of red emerging from the emptiness of the closet. 

Instantly, he closed his eyes in fright as he cried out under the music. 

Hold me in your arms, baby.

He clenched his eyes shut, immersing himself in his own darkness. In his darkness, he reviewed what he had seen. It was and odd shape, like a hip almost. And the color, it was shimmery— sequins, maybe glitter. The figure was calling for him to look again. 

He counted to three and promised himself he’d open his eyes by the end. 

Three. Squeeze me oh-so-tight.

Two. Show me that you love me too…

One. Gerard!

He heard a woman whispering his name and instantly opened his eyes. He had never been so scared in his life when he heard the distant sounding voice. 

When he looked back, he had seen the closet door had been opened wide, and had been completely empty. 

Put your lips next to mine dear.

As he turned his eyes to face his bedside table, he was confronted with the same red figure he had seen in the closet. It was the crimson skirt of a dress made of silk, not sequins. A caramel arm rested on the curve of the dress. 

Those green eyes of hers called for him to look up at her, and when he did, his fear multiplied. She was absolutely gorgeous. He couldn’t spot a blemish on her face. The bodice of her dress came up to her breasts and bunched around them, accentuating her blessings just enough. The skirt of her dressed hugged at her thighs to display her hourglass physique. If Gerard was interested in women, he would have done everything in his power to make her his.

She crouched down to Gerard’s level at the side of his bed and placed her hand on the side of his face. Her hand—her nails, more specifically, were too familiar to him. He began to shake. A faint whimper may have even escaped his throat. 

She shushed him. “It’s okay.” She cooed. “You’re okay.” She used the back of her nail to brush away one of his tears. “Just go to sleep.” 

He tried his hardest. He closed his eyes and lost himself in her touch.

Just a kiss goodnight, maybe…

VI

“There! Got it.” 

Gerard opened his eyes. Too his astonishment, he felt nothing out of the ordinary when he had seen Frank smiling back at him with his hand resting on the side of his face. It crushed him to not feel the great sense of reuniting and overwhelming joy he told himself he would feel in this exact situation. Frank retracted his hand at the sight of Gerard’s confusion. 

“Got what?” Gerard asked.

“The tomato sauce… you had on your face.”

“Oh!” It was all so strange to Gerard. “That.” He looked around. The room they had been in was so posh. They had been seated at the dining table at the center of the restaurant. Swarovski crystal chandelier dangling over them created miniature rainbows that relfscted all over Frank’s face in the light. If he were in a bubbly mood, it would have made him laugh. The walls were an elegant creme color and all the booths and tables were a dark ebony which contrasted the walls beautifully. 

All of the waiters had been bustling around them in a mess, but they gave their table a considerable amount of space. Gerard had looked down at himself and was pleased to see he was dressed for the occasion—whatever it was—with a penguin tuxedo and black dress shoes. Frank had been dressed similarly. 

Even as he stared into Frank’s eyes, it had been apparent to Gerard this had been a dream. As real as Frank’s hand had seemed on his face, or as real as their touching legs felt under the table, Gerard knew it was all a dream. He was lucid enough to not get his hopes up over the thought of having Frank back. 

“So,” Frank took a sip of his champagne, “you met my mom.” 

“Yes, I did.”

“She’s just lovely, ain’t she?” Frank laughed. 

“She’s the loveliest. I don’t know. She’s just kinda shaken about it all, I guess. And she— Wait. How do you know about that?”

Frank shrugged. “Don’t know. I just kinda do. It’s on the plus-side of being dead. You can just kinda look down at the world and see everything that’s happening.”

That statement instilled the kind of hope Gerard needed in the world: the knowledge that death doesn’t mean the end. From a dead person himself, Gerard was able to have firsthand testimony of what it was like to be dead— not black; not static. Then, he reminded himself that none of this was real. 

“Really? That’s what it’s like?” Gerard grew anxious.

“Yup. It’s like I can just tap into the spirituality of every person on the planet and know exactly what they’re doing.”

“That’s amazing!” He leaned forward in his seat.

“No! It’s awful!” Frank shook his head. “It means I get to watch you be in pain, and I can’t do anything about it. It means I’ll get to watch you grow old with someone else. It means I’ll be stuck here alone… without you.”

Hearing Frank say that upset Gerard beyond belief. It devastated him to know he would end up disappointing Frank. There was no one else in the world Gerard would rather grow old with than Frank. He would never love anyone else for as long as he’d live. “Oh, Frank. I mean, I would join you. But, yuh-you know.”

“Yeah. I know. I’ll miss being able to help you through an existential crisis late at night. Don’t worry though, I’m always watching you. I know what you’re going through.”

Gerard couldn’t help but tear up. The thought that Frank wouldn’t be there to rub his back when he feared his own death so greatly was mind bending: It was earth shattering. He had been too busy dealing with detectives and doctors and mothers he hadn’t even had real time to realize that.

“Can I just say something about you.”

Gerard nodded. 

“When I enter someone’s spirituality, I essentially enter their heart, and you’re not the only one I’ve done it to. Now, out of all of the people I’ve watched over, wanna guess whose heart was the purest I’ve ever seen? Yours.” Frank pointed at him. 

Gerard smiled. He didn’t want to believe him seeing as it was a dream and all. It still made him glow to hear Frank talk about him like that. “I don’t believe you.”

Frank scoffed. “Believe what you want. Just know your heart was a helluva lot cleaner than my dad’s—that’s for damn sure!” He took another sip of his champagne.

The body heat from the waiter coming up beside Gerard comforted him in a way he didn’t expect. He also didn’t expect the waiter to stoop down to his level to whisper a message into his ear. 

“The woman in the corner wearing the red dress wishes to speak with you.” Before he could look up at the waiter to ask for clarification, he was gone.

Gerard turned to the corner of the room. Sitting in the booth with another woman was the mistress in the red dress. Lord! In the light, she and her partner were the two most beautiful women in the world. Gerard could appreciate the way in which the red maiden's jet-black hair framed her chiseled cheekbones like a 1950’s pin-up model. Her partner was just as stunning with her mane of curls and her sable skin. He felt entranced by the sultry way she gestured for him to come over to her with her finger. 

“What was that all about?” Frank asked, turning around to see what Gerard had been looking at. 

“Uh, nothing.” He stood up, leaning forward to kiss Frank’s lips. “I’m gonna go take a piss.”

Frank squealed as he grabbed Gerard by the arm. “You never did that to me in front of people.”

Gerard sighed. “It’s but a dream.” 

He made sure Frank wasn’t watching him as he made his way to the corner booth. Each step on his way over to the women became more furious than the last. He pulled up a stray chair from one of the empty tables and sat across from the red maiden. 

“How has your evening been, Mr. Way?” She asked. Her coal-lipped smile infuriated him. 

“What the fuck is this?” His voice sounded hopeless. “Who the fuck are you?” He began tearing up through his anger. “What is he doing here?” He pointed to Frank, who had been sitting at their table, running low on champagne. “He should be resting!” 

“Gerard, it’s okay! Does he appear to be in any kind of distress to you?” 

“No, but—“

“Then what’s the problem?”

“It’s just. He doesn’t need to be here. He-he needs to be at peace.”

“He is at peace when he’s with you.”

“Who-who are you?”

She folded her hands on the table. “Sonja. This is my associate, Teresa.” 

“God! Gerard!” He yelled at himself. “Wake up! Wake up!” He slapped at his own face. All we wanted was to send Frank back to rest, and the only way he knew to do that was to end his dream. 

“Teresa, would you?” Sonja requested. 

Gerard heard the snapping of her fingers, and when he looked up, he was surrounded by an solid white room. He had been sitting at a table in the middle of the room, and the two women had been sitting across from him.

“Where am I? Where is Frank?” He was hysterical. 

“You’re in my office. Frank is resting, like you wanted him to.” 

“Can I go home now?” Gerard nervously tapped his foot. 

“Why yes of course, all you have to do is wake up. After all, like you told Frank, it’s just a dream, right?”

“That’s a joke we had. Like the nursery rhyme: ‘life is but a dream.’ It’s just something we’d say to each other for closure, I guess. How do you know about what I told him? Were you listening to us?” 

“Of course I was. I’m the one who brought him to you.”

“How? Who are you?”

Sonja said nothing. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and opened them. She stared at Gerard with irises which glowed a bright red. 

He nearly jumped out of his seat. “Oh no! You’re the devil, aren’t you?” His voice was a helpless whine.

She merely smiled. “If you do me a favor, you can spend a lot more time with him. The moment you approached me, I could tell your soul is very pure. You’ve been touched by the angels, you know. Your aura tells me your goal in life is to help people—to bring justice.”

“Yeah,” He scoffed, “My major is Pre-Law.”

"You were the one who wanted to go to the movies that night, right?" She stood from her seat and sauntered towards him. “Tell me Gerard,” she placed her hand on the cup of his jaw, just under his ear, “Does this sound like justice to you?”

He felt a surge of energy rush through his skull, a kind of pressure that resonated in his ears. It was a thunderous scream that felt like a knife had been taken to the walls of his eardrums. It was a mewling cry that turned into a wretched wail. A staccato moan that ripped at Gerard’s nerves and made him clench his teeth, eyes, and fists as he shook from the shock of it all. It was the screech of a man who had been branded a thousand times; the groan of a child-rearing mother; the cry of a lover trapped on the wrong side of the veil. And the worst part: Gerard recognized the voice. It had belonged to Frank. 

She removed her hand. Gerard sat there, trembling with a gloss in his eyes. “What are you doing to him?” 

“Nothing. We are simply observing him. This is what he’s like when you’re not around. You see?”

Gerard hung his head in thought, asking himself whether or not he should say what he was about to say. “What can I do about it? Kill myself?” 

Sonja sat with a smirk. She held out her hand, and Teresa handed her the black notebook she kept in her lap. Sonja opened it and slid it to him with the pages open to the dead middle of the book which had to be at least one or two thousand pages. 

He observed the writing on the lines: All signatures of people who Gerard presumed had been in the same position as him. 

Sonja placed a pen in the spine. “I’m willing to make you a deal.” Gerard looked up to her with an openness Sonja had not recognized in him before. “If you accept, you will need to bring me the souls of 1000 of the earth's evilest men.” 

“Bring you the souls? How? By killing them?”

Sonja nodded. “In exchange, Frank’s suffering will end.”

It was a lot for Gerard to think about; but that day, he wasn’t in a thinking kind of mood. He grabbed the pen and signed his name on the line under the last signature. The black ink glowed red for a second in a sweep of color, making him jump. 

“Anything to make this stop.”

Sonja smiled. “I’m glad to see you dutiful today.” He cringed. “You will be given a list when you awake. It will contain the exact dates, places, names, methods of which the evil souls will be collected. All you must do is follow the instructions carefully, and within three months’ time, your Frank will be at rest.” 

She slipped a ring off her finger with the kind of gusto only a woman in her position could have had. She slid it over to Gerard on the table. “Wear this from now on.”

He picked it up and examined its design. It was made of a silver like material with its etchings embellished with black. On its stem, it bore the design of a Virgin Mary like figure, only her face had been replaced with a skull. She wore a crown and was surrounded by a flash of light behind her. The band had been decorated with swirls and diamonds. It was cryptic.

“Nuestros señora de la Santa Muerte. Our Lady of Holy Death. She is a saint of the people, not of God. That is why she operates under me with the utmost neutrality: No preference for divinity or wickedness. Her job is to protect you from any mortal threat you may face: Legal or medical, and to escort the souls to me once you capture them for her. She will only be able to find you when you wear her ring. The second you take it off, the damages will be done, and she will not be able to collect your souls, meaning you won’t meet your quota.”

Gerard nodded. It was all so much to take in, yet he understood every word of it. 

“If you are ready, we can seal this deal now.” Sonja stood up. 

Gerard followed, nodding along the way. He stuck out his hand for her to shake. She waved her finger at it with a superlative amount of seduction in her motion. Gerard sighed at the realization that a handshake was not what she would use to settle this deal. He closed his eyes in preparation.

Sonja planted her black lips on Gerard’s. He tried his best to savor it as her lipstick infected his mouth with a spice that numbed his tongue. 

“There is no need for panic.” She smiled down at him as he felt to the floor in a loss of consciousness. 

For just a second, he agreed with her. Maybe it was her womanly venom intoxicating him. Maybe it was his newly found faith in the devil.


	2. II

Nothing had to make sense when Gerard awoke the next morning. It hardly fazed him when he took his first step out of bed that the shooting pain in his leg from the day before was gone. When he arrived at his bathroom he had been wearing the same suit he wore in his dream. His hair had been disheveled naturally from sleep, and the darkness that settled under his eyes had disappeared. The tension that struck him in his lower back was gone, and he finally was able to show the world his actual height of five feet and nine inches. He was always a horrible sloucher, so being able to stand with such impeccable posture was a luxury he had never been able to afford. With less eagerness than his usual self would feel, he unbuttoned his shirt. His yellow and purple bruises and stitches had disappeared, and it appeared that his stomach had deflated back to normal. In their place sat a thick lightning bolt scar running horizontally across his abdomen. It wasn’t tender at all. He raised his leg onto the bathroom counter. As he lifted his pant leg, he saw a circular scar where his bullet wound should have been.

VII

As he lathered a handful of soap into his hair and let the lukewarm water from his shower clean him off, he figured the next time he saw Sonja, he’d thank her. It didn’t seem likely at first that the devil would be so kind as to heal him of his wounds, but his job title had changed from scholar to soldier of the wicked. It only made sense that the general would prepare her army with the utmost resources; in Gerard’s case, a healthy body.

Being healed of his physical ailments had been nice, but it was overshadowed by the newly placed rage he found in his heart. He had never felt so angry in his life: Angry at what he had heard in Frank’s voice. It ate at him to know he was in limbo with so much unfulfilled life. The sorrow that left a vice grip around his chest could only be released when he did what needed to be done.

He tried to put off acknowledging what needed to be done. He didn’t want to think about what he would feel like after he had slaughtered 1000 people. As Sonja had said, “touched by the angels.” It was in his nature. He hoped the feeling of having Frank back would be worth it all in the end.

VIII

Gerard grabbed at the cold metal handle of his drawer with his dry, rusty fingers. The clothes Linda had thrown about the floor had disappeared. He certainly didn’t remember putting them away the night before. What shocked him was the sizable black box he found sitting among his freshly folded clothes.

A sense of excitement filled him for just a second before he realized what was in the box: The list. One thousand in three months.

He sat on the edge of his bed and opened the box with the same caution he would have given if he was holding a newborn. On top was a letter in a black envelope. In a Victorian script, his name was written on the back. He flipped it over. Across the pointed part of the envelope sat a red wax seal with a snake emblem embellished with a metallic black pigment. He broke the seal and took out the letter.

VIV

Gerard, In reading this, you are completing the first part of your mission. Included in the box you shall find a book. Owning this book comes with some rules that you must follow.

1.) Only read and follow pages with the given day’s date on them. 2.) Tell no one about this book. 3.) Know where this book is at all times. 4.) Follow every direction exactly as it is written. 5.) Don’t ask questions.

If you can obey these rules, then these three months will go by smoothly for you. A failure to obey the rules will result in veritable consequences.

You’re welcome for healing your wounds and remember to always wear your ring.

Sonja.

X

Staring down at her signature sent a picture of her vexing smile through Gerard’s mind. If the devil had a soul, she’d lose part of it every time she signed one of these letters. He dropped it to the floor and reached for the journal at the bottom of the box.

As he shredded the paper fixed around the journal, it revealed a black leather cover with red pages. He wanted nothing more than to flip through the pages all at once, but it was against the rules: Only look at today's names.

With every glimmer of eagerness and fear resonating in his stomach, he flipped to the first page. 

XI

03/08/2004

Angel “Roxy Sweetwater” Mclaughlin.

1457 Lawrence St., San Bernardino

7:00pm

A gunshot, aim for the head

XII

Teresa woke up to the gentle handed touch from Sonja across her ribs through the cutout in her nightgown. It didn’t bother her when she felt Sonja’s hands creeping up and settling on her breast. She didn’t turn over and face her in bed. “So, is this how it’s going to be from now on?”

“Is what how it’s going to be?”

She sighed. “You bring me along to do your dirty work during the day, then at night we terrorize the mourning in their dreams with the idea of their dead lovers to trick them into making deals. And when we’re done, you bring me back home and fuck me? Is that how it’s going to be?”

“Oh! Gerard, the one in mourning? They’re so foolish. Can I tell you a secret? ” Her eyes were friendly in a way that made Teresa hopeful.

Teresa finally flipped over to face her. “What?”

“That wasn’t actually his lover screaming I had showed him. It’s a mind game I play with them where I send so much energy through their ears and they’re under so much stress that they imagine it’s their lover just to comfort themselves. Then, when I confirm that it is their lover, they believe in it.”

She scoffed. “You really are as evil as they say.”

“Evil enough to bring you up here with me to live a life of luxury in my realm when you died. I could have let you go with all of the other heathens who died of drug overdoses.”

Teresa stood up in anger, pushing Sonja’s arm off herself. “Oh, so now I’m a heathen?”

“No!” Sonja got on all fours and crawled towards her on their bed. “To ‘The Man’ you might be. But not to me. You’re my love. Do you think I’d allow myself to love a heathen?”

“Everything! I mean everything is about you! You, and how much better you are than everyone down here. ‘I’m the worst of the worst, but I’m still the best.’ I can just feel you saying it.” With every exclamation, she gesticulated. Every gesticulation became more and more shaky, and the sound of tears grew in her voice. She sunk to the floor.

Sonja jumped after her. “No, no, no.” She whispered as she cradled Teresa’s head against her chest.

She let out a layered breath. “I just love you so much, and now that I’m in hell with you, it just doesn’t feel like you love me back anymore.”

“No. Don’t you say that. You know it’s not true.” She could feel her shaking her head against her chest. “I’ve— Lots have been done to allow you here. It wouldn’t have been done if I didn’t love you.” She planted a kiss on her forehead. 

“It’s just,” She sniffled and laughed, “I guess it’s just hard being the First Lady of Hell.”

Sonja smiled. “We’ve never had one before. Would you look at that! You’ve only been dead for a week and you’re already blazing trails.”

“Well yeah. But, let’s hope nobody else follows them.”

“Let’s hope.”

XIII

The new piece of jewelry felt so foreign on Gerard’s finger that he spent the entire cab ride over to 1457 Lawrence St. fiddling with it and finding which finger it fit on best. Every time he took it off, he felt exposed. The thought of letting himself be so vulnerable for even the shortest amount of time—considering his new occupation—scared him.

Oddly enough, the only finger that gave him the most security with the ring was his second finger on his left hand. He guessed it was official now: He was married to the darkness. It didn’t yet comfort him.

“This is the address?” Gerard asked his driver, a middle-aged Caribbean man.

“Yeah man, 1457 Laurence Street, right?”

“Yeah.” Gerard looked up at the neon sign with its name written out in yellow against the design of a pair of women’s panties: “Cheeky’s Drag Emporium.” If only he knew beforehand what his destination was, he might not have been so scared to enter the club.

“I guess that’s it. Thanks.” He opened the car door and stood out on the curb next to the car.

“See you later, man.” The driver called as he drove away.

It wasn’t until he had begun to walk towards the entrance of the club that he had realized that he hadn’t paid the cab driver. It stung him. In his entire life, he hadn’t lied, cheated, or even so much as stolen a carton of milk in the lunch line at school. 

The club had accumulated a line of people, mostly women, some bachelorette parties, some fresh-looking couples, and at the very back, stood Gerard in his monkey suit. 

He tried to eavesdrop to distract himself from what he was about to do.

There was a couple in front of him: One man sizably smaller than the other. The little one reached up and wrapped his hands around the taller one’s shoulders. The taller one put his hands around the smaller one’s waist; like they were having a high school slow dance.

“Trent,” the smaller one called, “you know I brought you here for your birthday because I trust you, right?”

Trent smiled down at him. “Yeah. I swear to you—cross my heart and hope to die—I have not even thought about getting with Jordan since you found out.”

“Good.” The smaller one assured.

They both turned to Gerard once they noticed him staring. He looked down at the floor in embarrassment. They turned back to face the front of the line.

“It’s already fucking 7:03! Finally, they’re letting us in!” The smaller one complained as the bouncer opened the weighted door of the joint. One by one, he began checking every persons’ ID cards.

The fear grew in his mind. No one in line looked under the age of twenty-five and Gerard himself was less than a month away from turning twenty. Only God knew the fury that would rain down upon Gerard if he was unable to kill Roxy with the soul reason being that he couldn’t get into a club. The last time he checked, he didn’t even have a wallet.

With frightful hands, he patted himself down, looking to feel a release as his hand felt a wad of folded leather through a pocket in his clothes. When he finally did, the release was so sickeningly sweet. He pulled his wallet out of the hidden pocket in the lining of his suit. To his delight, he found an ID card with all his information, and a stack of money resting in the back compartment of the wallet.

After Trent and his partner made their way through, Gerard held his wallet out, his ID clearly visible through the transparent sleeve. He felt a sense of power when he did it, like an FBI Agent. The bouncer took his wallet and read the date on his card.

The bouncer laughed. “Wow! 27? You lucky little vampire, you don’t look a day over 14!”

XIV

He let him in.

Gerard nervously laughed as he took his wallet back, and examined his card as he walked in. Under the pink and blue lighting, he could barely read “Gerard Arthur Way. 69 Salter place. Sex: M. Eyes: Haz. HT: 5-09. DOB: 04/09/1977.” He laughed. 27 years old. He resonated with the number in a way he couldn’t explain.

The interior of the club was so terrifically ugly with its neon pink fabric which had been used as wallpaper, and the dollar store rhinestones that had been glued on sporadically. The disco ball hanging from the ceiling refracted tiny squares of rainbow across Gerard’s face. One beam of light had hit him right in the eye just as he looked up at all the pictures on the walls of the drag queens working there.

Magnolia Gentry.

Lowry Applebottom

Trina

He read the names under each headshot.

Roxy Sweetwater. There she was.

She was the thinnest queen on the wall, and the limited space between her hairline and her eyebrow told the world she was Hispanic. The thick black line she used as eyeliner and the very distinct star she had drawn on her cheek made Gerard confident in his ability to recognize Roxy if he saw her.

“Hey, prettyboy!”

Gerard turned his head. The bartender had been staring back at him with the dirtiest grin he could possibly manage. Gerard cocked his head, asking him What?

“You gonna get somethin’ to drink, or are you just gonna stand there and steal the show with that gorgeous face’uh yours?” The other man working the bar elbowed him.

Gerard nodded and began an awkward stroll to the bar. The tender handed him a menu and he skimmed it over, barely able to concentrate over the music playing and the strobe lights tracing the interior.

“Can I get a—Uh—Hot, wet—”

“A ‘Hot, Wet Pussy’?” He finished.

Gerard nodded.

“Aw, sugar.” He reached for his mixing cup and the ice shovel. “You ain’t got nothing to be afraid of here. No one’s gonna slap you on the back’uh your hand for sayin’uh few curse words.”

“Duly noted.” Gerard couldn’t find it in himself to banter with the man. He only had one purpose for being in the club: Killing Roxy Sweetwater.

“Muh’name’s Adrian, by the way. If you wanted to meet me out back after the show, I can show you a good time er’two.” Adrian shook Gerard’s drink at his ears, switching sides as one of his arms grew tired.

Gerard tried his best to ignore him. Ignore everything.

“Melon and peach liqueurs,” He began pouring his drink into a bright yellow glass, “Pineapple and cranberry juice: One Hot, Wet Pussy.”

“Thank you.” Gerard whispered as he reached for the drink.

“Ah!” He wanted to die. “That’s only free so long’as ya take me up on my offer.”

He picked up his drink and took a step back, “We’ll have to see about that.” With the sweet and sour blends distracting him from it all as he took a seat right in front of the stage. The show began nearly thirty minutes and a basket of tortilla chips later.

It first was a loud blast of music that nearly made Gerard fall out of his seat. Under the vibrations of it all, he could hear the frames rattling. Then the lights dimmed, and the door of the club shut. He could feel his pulse thudding along to the drum.

“Ladies and Ladyboys,” An androgynous voice came from the overhead speaker, “the moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived. Please welcome to the stage, Cheeky’s very own: Roxy Sweetwater!”

The entire club kept looking over their shoulders, predicting which set of red velvet curtains Roxy was going to come out of. Gerard’s wanted him to enjoy the show. At the realization that Roxy’s cause of death was supposed to be self-defense. He realized that it was highly unlikely that a queen would attack one of her fans in the audience as she was performing. He figured he could wait.

“Hey bitches!” Roxy greeted. “How y’all doin’?’”

The crowd cheered as Gerard sat motionless, simply absorbing the noise.

“Look at this cunt right here.” Roxy pointed right at him. “Y’all in here having a good time, an’ he in here sitting here like a dead fuckin’ fish!” She imitated him, perfectly capturing his 1000-yard stare, embellished with the puckered fish lips. “Adrian, get this poor man a goddamn drink!”

Gerard snapped back to life, not knowing what to do. He cluelessly smiled.

“Oh, look at them little teeth of yours. They must not get in the way of things, if you know what I mean.” She stuck her hand in her bra and pulled out a tiny slip of paper. She took a big step off the stage and handed it to Gerard, holding up a hand phone to her mouth. “Call me.” She mouthed.

Perfect.

Her show went on. Even with his ears turned half off, he could gather a few facts about Roxy: She was from Oakland. She was a top. She was a banjee girl— whatever that meant. He could work with that.

It just didn’t come together in his mind exactly how he’d do it. Would he have to seduce her? Would she stick him up? However it was to be done, he didn’t know how he would feel about himself afterwards.

The show ended with a final lip-sync to a club song Gerard had never heard before, and just like that, Roxy was off the stage. The people in their chairs had begun to finish their drinks and pay their bills. Over the chattering of everyone else, Gerard could hear Trent and his boyfriend drunkenly arguing in the back of the room.

Amid it all, he spotted Roxy heading back behind the velvet curtains. And suddenly, he felt a kind of sting in his finger. An intense vibration coming from his ring and told him to follow her.

He peeled away the curtain once he had made it across the room, exposing the dressing room. To his left, he saw a rack of clothes full of gowns of all sizes. Right at the front, he saw the same blue jumpsuit Roxy had been wearing with its design that looked like street art, and her matching ball cap hanging from the same hook.

As he turned his head to the left, he saw all the empty vanities with the names of their respective queens’ names written above them on a small chalkboard. He saw all the photographs and letters and postcards they had taped to their mirrors. He nearly gasped when he saw Roxy standing beside her vanity, bare bottomed as she bent over to stow away some of her makeup.

She straightened out, standing up and catching a glimpse of Gerard staring back at her in her reflection. “Oh shit!” She squealed, “You’re interested.” She stretched the word into 4 syllables. “Meet me outside in the alley. I just gotta take off my face and I’ll be right out.”

Gerard nodded as he turned and walked out of the dressing room.

XV

His last few steps in the club were not filled with sadness of leaving the place. The show was an hour and a half of his life he would never get back, and deep down, he hoped he never found himself in such a situation again.

He thought he had found the perfect spot to wait in the alley—beside a dumpster—until a few drops of, God knows how old, water had fallen from a pipe above him, staining his suit with a kind of urban scent. An urban dirt.

With an open palm, he wiped away the droplets and they blended in with the fabric of his coat. He stared up at the source of the water, and what he saw nearly made him shit himself. The Saint of Death had gazed down at him from the roof of the establishment, her skeleton hands peeking out of her oversized sleeves in contrition, almost. She lifted a single bony finger up to her teeth, where her lips would have been. Her head turned forward, facing further down the alley. Gerard followed her gazed.

The thinned figure of Adrian could be seen stumbling towards him with a limp in his stride. “Hey big boy!” He slurred as he grasped at the alley wall to catch his balance. “How’s about I give you a blowjob right ‘bout now?”

Gerard took a step back. “Get away from me.”

“Silly boy. Whatever Roxy plans on doing with you is a hell of a lot worse than whatever I’d do to you.”

He was shocked. “How do you know about me and her?”

“This is her alley. She brings her interests down here an’ tells ‘em’tuh wait for’er. Don’t you touch Roxy. She’s got the HIV you know. Not only that, you mess with her and you’ll never be seen again.” Adrian made his way for him in his wobbly, bow-legged stride.

Gerard became paralyzed. There was no telling what Adrian would do to him. He looked up at the saint, but she had disappeared, and Adrian had still been gaining on him. He took a few steps back in anticipation.

“Adrian!” Roxy yelled as she made her way down the steps of the back entrance of the club— He made his steps. Roxy had gotten out of drag, and was just plain old Angel now, and Gerard couldn’t be more grateful. “You get the fuck away from him. I swear to God, if you lay a hand on him, I’ll— “He cursed at him in Spanish as he ran up to him, swinging his purse around. He smacked him with his bag a few times, causing Adrian to flinch even after Angel had stopped.

Adrian was crying. There was no telling why with that drunk bastard.

“Let’s go.” Angel called to Gerard as he lead the way out of the alley. Gerard followed without a word.

“What’s’ya name?” He asked popping a wad of gum he had hidden under his tongue.

Use a fake name, Gerard thought to himself. Never let them know who you are. “Frank.” He rasped.

“That’s real nice. I had a dog named Frank once. He was a little black schnauzer.” He sighed, “Real cute. Real stupid too.”

Gerard laughed.

“My name’s Angel.” Gerard didn’t expect him to pronounce his name with a Hispanic accent: Ang-hel, not Angel.

“Well, Angel, where are we going?” He had been following him for a few minutes, not knowing where they were headed.

“My place.”

“Kay.” It didn’t really matter to Gerard.

They had made their way to the main block and had been walking in the light. As incomparable as Angel was to Frank, Gerard couldn’t help but be reminded of that hideous night. It was all too similar: The late hour, the street lights, the smell of the city taking over his senses, the overwhelming fear of being caught— by anyone.

Angel turned to grab a cigarette out of his bag, and when he turned back, his face had changed. He was Frank.

“On a scale of one to ten,” He asked Gerard, “how much do you like the smell of cherry blossoms?”

Gerard laughed in confusion. “Don’t know. Never smelled them before.”

Frank scoffed. “Yeah, you have! Remember Lindsey from our Analysis of the Constitution class?”

Gerard nodded.

“Remember her perfume? What was it called—Morning Sunrise? No, Early Sunsets!”

“Yes.” His voice was drawn out in attempts to elongate the conversation. He knew it was only a matter of time before Frank were to turn back to Angel.

“Well, that is cherry blossom scented.”

“Okay.” He was happy enough to forget about Angel and his job entirely. “A five then.”

Frank smiled. “I always loved cherry blossom trees, ya know.”

“Uh-hu.”

“I never got to go to Japan during blooming season.”

Gerard had never heard something so sad in his life.

“I’d always talked about going, even when I was a kid. I’d seen a picture of one of the trees in one of my mom’s magazines in her old office. I’d fallen in love ever since; talking about them all the time, reading books about them at the library, writing essays about them in grade school, having dreams about walking through fields of them.”

They both found themselves crying as they continued down the streets.

“My parents planted a sapling on my grave, ya know.”

“I don’t even know where your grave is!” He sobbed in shame. “No one would tell me! They hate me.”

Frank shook his head. “I’d rate the smell of cherry blossoms an eleven out of ten. The only thing keeping me from inhaling that beautiful scent when they bloom is a three-inch piece of wood and six feet of dirt.”

Gerard stopped in his place to rub his eyes. He dug the palms on his hands into his sockets, trying to cauterize the flow of tears with friction. “That’s—"He didn’t know what to say.

Angel was back when he opened his eyes again. And with that, Gerard had lost Frank again. In that moment, it all became real.

“You okay?” Angel asked, reaching in his bag for a stick of gum.

Gerard wiped at his eyes. They were dry to his surprise. “I’m okay.” They continued walking.

A few more blocks down the road, they had arrived at Angel’s apartment. A cute little three-story building that looked too old for any twenty-something to choose to live in. Angel entered the four-digit code on the pad of the front door, and the entered the quarters on the first floor.

Gerard already prepared himself an escape route through the window at the front of the building. It wasn’t a very far jump. He’d make it out without a scratch.  
The inside of Angel’s apartment was warm despite the cold from the outside. Gerard felt inclined to take off his jacket.

“Oh yeah. I know, it’s pretty hot in here. My room is right above the boiler room in the basement.” He set his bag on the table, instructing Gerard to do the same with his inviting pat on the dented furniture.

He had run off into his kitchen by the time Gerard had settled down in one of the dining room chairs. Angel came back with two open bottles of beer. He had been drinking his when he sat down, and when he passed the other one to Gerard, he noticed how Angel had already drank half of it in one go. It made him laugh; nervously.

If his hands weren’t as clammy as they had been, he’d be able to feel the freezing condensation on the side of the brown glass. He might have even been able to feel the same amount of drink flowing down his throat as Angel had felt. He needed it.

“Did you enjoy the show?” Angel shifted forward in his seat.

Gerard nodded his head.

“You did? ‘Cuz you seemed like you was on Mars or something.” He took another sip.

“I’ve got a lot on my mind.” Like: where would he get the gun from? Shit. Rule 5.) Don’t ask questions.

“I see. I do too.”

Gerard drank from his glass. It was as if the question in his mind had answered itself. He had run a hand along the side of his torso out of pure curiosity, and he found the handle of a hand gun sticking out of his belt. He didn’t remember tucking it in. It was as if the thing had materialized: A sign of the time. A motivation he guessed.

He gripped the handle firmly with no confidence he was holding it the right way. Before the previous day, Gerard would have never thought of holding a gun let alone using one to kill someone. It was all so surreal.

“You heard what Adrian said about me, right?” His zeal had been lost.

Gerard nodded.

“It’s true. I got HIV. I don’t know who I got it from. You know why he said that everyone I take home is never seen again?”

“Why?”

“‘Cuz they don’t stick around long enough. ‘cept Adrian. That man tried to have his way with me and he only way I could get him to stop was by telling him about my disease. The fucker hasn’t touched me since.”

A part of Gerard just wanted to listen; to be human and hear the man out. So, he did, leaning back in his chair, crossing his arms.

“I’ve done some shit.” He stood up, grabbing his, now, empty bottle and walking over to the trash bin. He dropped it in and it fell with the kind of unsettling crash that echoed throughout the room.

If he was patient enough, Gerard wouldn’t have to ask anything. The heat of the moment would strike, and Angel would spill his guts.

“I got a brother. He was real young.” Angel leaned up against his kitchen sink and stared out the window just above it. “Just this little baby. He was born two months early. He had this skin disease Harlequin Ikthi-“ he stuttered a few syllables. “Ikthi-something. Point is, it’s super rare. He had the most severe form of it. Doctors gave him two years to live.” His voice broke. “He sat in the little incubator with his glasses and a tube down his throat. His skin looked like it was wrapped in fifty layers of plastic wrap, but it was cracked and peeling at the same time. On top of that, he had one kidney and a hole in his heart. I couldn’t look down at him without crying. He was only three days old and they were sending him off for surgery the next day. I just couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let a brother of mine grow up and live through all that pain. I couldn’t let my parents spend all that money and stress over a child that they would never get to see grow up. So, one day, I was in his room alone, and I opened his chamber. I stuck my hand in, and I— I don’t even remember what I did, but by the time the doctors had come back to the room, I had been pushed to the floor and my dad had been beating me in the hospital.” He leaned over further down and rubbed at his forehead. “Security came and—“

Bang.

Angel fell to the floor. He had been too enthralled in his retelling to notice Gerard’s footsteps approaching him or the gun behind his head being cocked.

Gerard took a few steps before the growing puddle of blood grew to touch his shoes. He stared down at his shoes, replaying the last few moments in his head over and over again. It didn’t occur to him what he had done. He was in a situation in which people tell themselves, “Not me. I’d never do that.”

He kneed in front of the body, to move a few locks of hair from his face. Angel's coal-colored eyes stared back at Gerard. A tear fell from one and mixed in with his blood on the floor. 

"Come on Angel," Gerard said as he stood. "don't you cry."

The gravity of the situation didn’t set in, and he was having a hard time accepting he had just killed a man, and that he’d have to do it nine hundred and ninety-nine more times. Not Gerard. He’d never do something like that.

The distinct robes of the Saint of Death scared him as he looked up from his feet. She merely stood there with her skeleton hands clasped. Gerard couldn’t tell whether she would be smiling or scowling at him if she had facial muscles. Her mandible lowered and with the sound of an almost cosmic vacuum cleaner, she sucked, what he figured was, Angel’s soul out of his body. The soul retorted with an equally loud screech as it traveled down her hollow mouth. She closed her mouth, and the dark light that now radiated from her chest dimmed the entire room. He figured it was from the blackness of Angel’s soul he had seen as it floated towards the Saint, almost like the opposite of blowing out cigarette smoke.

The Saint stood in front of him, lifting the hood of her robe over her skull. She wilted to the ground in a pile of dust. Gerard bent over to run his fingers through the remains. They dispersed as he rubbed the fine powder on his fingertips. She couldn’t have been dead. Gerard knew that for sure.

Unsurprisingly, there was no police sirens whirring down the streets and no neighbor calling the police at the sound of the gunshot. Not a single person batted an eyelash as Gerard slipped out of the building through the front door.

XVI

The taxi ride back to his apartment was silent. Again, the car drove off before allowing him to pay. There he stood on the front step, of his apartment building, his hands in his pockets and the Red light from the CVS sign across the street shining down on his face. An idea came to him.

The cashier woman paid him no mind as he bought a black composition book and a three pack of gel pens. Why would she? He was just a smelly little bloke with horrible posture, in a three-piece suit and a heater in his belt— in a drugstore at 12:30 am.

Something had come over him in that hour that filled his hand with an itch to write— no, not write: To document. It was the ring on his left hand telling his right hand to pick up a pen and report everything that had happened; what he had felt. He figured it would help him vent seeing as he couldn't tell anyone about what he was doing.

XVII

When he got home, that's exactly what he did:

March 8th, 2004

I know the only way I'll get through the next three months is by treating this as a job. I'm quitting school on the 22nd, when we come back from spring break, as I doubt I'll be able to keep up with my studies and be a full-time servant of the devil. God, just writing that makes me cringe.

I won't be able to complete a degree in law, but I'll be able to serve justice in another way. But will I really? This whole day I've been telling myself that, and I assume that I'll continue to until June. June 8th is when I'll put Frank to rest. One thousand in three months. Shit.

There was an idea that crossed my mind that knowing what my targets were being killed for would help me cope better: I wouldn’t feel bad if I knew I was killing a child molester or a rapist or even a serial killer. I couldn’t have been farther from reality. I swear that if anyone ever decides to tell me what they’ve done like that again, I will flat out kill them right then and there.

It’s too painful. In the case of Angel, I don’t know what I would have done. That little baby may not have deserved to be called a burden, but it sure wasn’t going to live long. Should his only memories be a short life of pain, or should he be stopped from suffering at all. It wasn’t Angel’s choice to make. It was up to God.

There is a God. There must be one if there is a devil and angels that touch me. And an afterworld that Frank is lost in. I’d never been his biggest fan, yet in this moment, I wonder if he is disappointed in me.

Like the old song says, “It might be a sin, but I’ll take your bet.” I didn’t bet my soul for a fiddle of gold. I guess I sold it for Frank. I don’t know if I’m okay with it or not. Would my golden fiddle be okay with that? I hoped he would. My soul depended on it.

I doubt that I will ever forget my first kill. If I do, remind me that I’m losing my humanity. His name was Angel. I know, ironic. He was on my list because he himself was a murder in the eyes of god. He killed his baby brother with this rare skin condition and other defected organs. Thank the lord that no one will ever read this. I’m a shit writer, and I couldn’t think of any other way to phrase that. Anyway, he decided that he alone was a better candidate to make the choice of life and death for his baby brother than his parents. Better than the surgeons. Better than God himself. I was not there in his home to judge him. I was there to bring him to judgement. Does that make me a bad person? Who will judge me? Can I be asking these questions? I don’t think I can.

Tomorrow, I'll wake up and begin my next hunt. I feel like today was just a sort of training day where I learned the ropes. I feel like tomorrow the real shit will start and I’ll have to kill a boat load of people. The numbers don’t work out if I’m killing one person a day. If that were the case, I’d be at this for more than three years. I’d take three months over three years any day.

Will they all be in San Bernardino? People will notice if the population suddenly drops by a thousand.

I’m rambling now.

Goodnight.

XVIII

He felt himself trembling as he fell asleep: a helpless kind of tremble that emanated from deep within his muscles. A tremble that brought unwanted tears to his eyes.

It all came to him like the rising flow of a dammed river: overflowing with feelings of fear, grief, guilt. His breathing increased rapidly. The trembles turned to dramatic squirming as he panted.

The deprivation of oxygen made it even harder to think, making it even harder for Gerard to console himself. It didn’t help that he began to feel that his flesh was disappearing as it became numb and fell asleep. He became drunk, unruly with his own body, as he descended into panic.

A hand graced the side of his thigh through his sheets. He opened his eyes. Teresa sat next to him on the side of the bed. Her black irises expanded as they contacted his own.

He didn’t know what to say. She stunned him, not so much with her beauty, but with her mere presence: The amount of energy she brought into the room. I guess he was overwhelmed by her having a soul. He could sense it on her, like a smile was to happiness.

“What do you need, young man?” She spoke to him as if she were so much older than him.

He felt so helpless under her palm. He felt like a child looking up at his mother for solace during a thunderstorm. Not a single syllable had left his throat as he unwrapped his hand from his sheet and reached up to her, his palm outstretched.

She leaned forward to appease him. His finger landed on a single curl of Teresa’s waist-length hair. He twirled in his hand, looping and spinning it as the tears on his cheeks dried and balls of mucus formed in the corners of his eyes.

Teresa smiled down at him, a giggle leaving her closed lips. She reached for him, cleaning his cheek tenderly. “It’s time we go see her.” She informed him.

See her? He thought. Nothing good could come from that. “No!” he yelled, but before the sound waves could even come into existence, he was in Sonja’s office.

The white light started him, causing him to wince in irritation.

“Gerard!” She greeted, holding her hand out for him to shake.

Gerard didn’t know the devil shook hands. He knew she kissed, however. He stood up from that familiar seat on the opposite side of her desk, leaning over to shake her hand.

“You did a spectacular job today.” He didn’t know such kind words could come from her. They might not have been what he wanted to hear, especially in this context, but they were enlightening.

“Th-thank you?” All three of them sat down.

“I know this must be hard for someone like you, and it is very far from over, but I can assure you that if you keep yourself on this path you will end very strong. I like your approach.”

Gerard nodded.

“I see that you’ve started yourself a collection there in your bedroom.” She reached under her desk and pulled out a bag and slid it over to him. “For organizational purposes.”

He reached for the bag with a blind hand. The pattern on it was something Gerard could only recognize as snake skin: an anaconda if he had to guess. What did he know about snake skin bags?

It felt heavy and full in his hands, so he opened the magnetic button. Inside were all his books, his pistol, a pager and his pens neatly tucked into a pocket. The bag reminded him of the school lunch the two women would have packed him if they were his moms. He smiled up at them, and they matched with proud grins on their faces.

“Goodnight, Gerard.” Sonja said before ringing the desktop bell right in front of her.

Gerard fell asleep.

XIX

Teresa rested on the chaise that sat in front of the window of their bedroom. She gazed out into the endless abyss of hell. If she squinted hard enough she could see the whisper of souls that floated out around in the void. The way the black clouds danced with each other, crackling and contracting as if they were under constant electrocution.

She knew she wouldn’t last two minutes out in the void. The negativity would eat her alive, and she’d dissipate and become just like them. That was the last thing she wanted.

Every day since her death, she had stayed in the fortress and watched out the window. That day had been the first time she had ever been back on Earth since she had died.

In Hell she just simply was; On Earth, she was a demon. There was a presence to her any mortal would flee from. The kind of aura that could make a white rose rot, that would make dogs bark and crows caw. It surprised her when she walked down the California street and nearly every person sneered at her. A baby even cried as she turned a corner.

The second Gerard saw her, there was no malice in his gaze. It appeared that he looked up to her as an older sister or a maternal figure. He looked at her and Sonja as if they were family. He embraced the devil with the same stare he might his own mother.

There was something about him that didn’t always sit right with Teresa—In a good way. The night in the restaurant dream, there was a pain in his eyes she figured no evil person could feel. Sure, this was the first person she had ever seen sell their soul, but willingness and virtue were too different things. 

There was some type of divine virtue that filled Gerard when he signed that contract telling Teresa he was virtuous enough to play God. She was willing to bet everything he owned as a mortal that all the millions of people who had sold their souls were willing. There was probably no drive behind their actions. Gerard felt as if he was needed to pacify Frank, and she feared that eventually he’d feel needed to send the world’s bad guys to Hell. Oh, how she feared the day Gerard would feel needed. She’d do everything in her power to stop it.

Sonja’s gentle hands clasped themselves around Teresa’s shoulders causing her to flinch a little. She brought her mouth to the crown of Teresa’s head, inhaling the sweet smell of her strawberry shampoo. At first, it surprised Teresa even though the devil and other demons were immortal they still had to do humanly things like eat and bathe. Sonja reminded her that with human bodies came human problems (all of which could be fixed at the drop of a hat, however.)

“That boy is special.” Teresa claimed.

“He is.” Sonja kissed at her scalp.

“How?”

“You’ll see.” She said, slipping a drifting hand down the front of Teresa’s open gown.

Teresa could see their reflections in the glass. She looked up at her wife: The ultimate seductress, the epitome of sin and she couldn’t help but feel a numbness between her legs.

They had finished on the chaise and sat side by side staring out of the window together.

“Tell me this will never come to an end.” Teresa said, realizing how easily it could be arranged for her to be on the other side of the glass.

“Darling,” Sonja drew, “this is only the beginning.”

XX

When Gerard had opened his eyes, he was met by a new flash of bright light. A strange formation of shapes laid themselves out in front of him, and right away, he noticed something strange: He had been standing. He had never woken up standing before.

The scenery around him was so unfamiliar as were his clothes. On this day, he had been dressed in a black and red striped shirt. An ascot hung around his neck and he wore pants that exposed his ankles. His feet were covered in the type of black slip-on shoes he’d expect a prepubescent girl to wear to private school and he smelled of musk cologne. 

He looked out in front of him and saw a river with boats and other small vessels afloat. The air smelled of slight roses and he could hear people talking all around him. No one was speaking English, yet he understood every word they had been saying to each other. He didn’t care to eavesdrop.

He looked over the edge of the balcony he had been standing on to see that there was a small plaza of people below him, all talking, children laughing and singing, selling bread to each other and other goods. He was high up: very high up as a matter of fact; high enough for the afternoon breeze to make his body tense up.

The thought he had lost his bad filled his mind for a half-second before he frantically reached for his side and found the snake skin bag. His hands practically ripped off the clasp, and he looked through the bag for all his things. Two books, a pager, a pistol, and some pens; just as Teresa and Sonja had packed them for him. He was filled with relief.

Frank would love the view here so much. He loved to see people in their best state interacting with each other in the peaceful way these people did. It was so soothing.

A young couple had come up to Gerard out stretching a camera towards him.

“Sir, Sir.” The man spoke French. Gerard understood, even though he had never taken a day of French in his life. “Would you mind taking our picture?”

Gerard nodded and took the camera, looking behind them to see the tip of the tower that stood behind them. The Eiffel Tower. One word burned in his mind like a hot coal at the realization: Paris.

Sonja had sent him to another continent to kill people. At least one of his questions was answered.

“Yes, I can take your picture.” Gerard answered in perfect French, better than the man’s had been. The couple posed, and he took their picture, handing them the camera back afterward.

“Hey.” The man began in English, “Are you by any chance American?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to join us for the day? We’re tourists, and you seem to know the language pretty well.”

“Absolutely.”


	3. III

These people approaching Gerard told him he needed to follow. No one in San Bernardino except the person he needed to kill had been so open to him in the way that made him feel welcome. It was a sign.

“Well then,” the man began. “I'm Antonio.” He shook Gerard’s hand curtly. “This is Whitney.” Whitney stepped forward and did the same. Her hand was thin and boney, like a malnourished child, while Antonio’s grip was firm and dominant.

“Frank.” He waved.

“Where are you from, Frank?” Whitney asked as they lead him to their car.

“Chula Vista, California.” There was a hint of pride in his speech.

“California! Aren't you lucky?” Antonio laughed. “I'm always telling Whit that the next place we go ought to be California, but she's all, ‘No, Tony. Let's leave the country!’”

Gerard laughed at Tony’s impersonation of his girlfriend.

“We’re from Colorado, by the way.”

Gerard nodded.

He had never been to France before, so as they walked down the cobblestone streets in the way back to their car, Gerard took it all in. The aroma that came from each little shop changed with nearly every block they passed. Whitney and Antonio barely spoke to Gerard, maybe something here and there to ask what a sign said, and to his amazement, he could miraculously read it. He didn't mind not being involved in their conversation. He wanted all of the time he could to enthrall himself in the French culture. It would probably be the last time he would ever walk this street, be in this city, in this country.

The car the they lead him to was a 1989 Fiat Spider. It was navy blue, and the metal of the side mirrors were sparkling with wax.

“Nice car guys!” Gerard complimented. He was just playing the game.

“My uncle rented it to us.” Whitney said as she opened the door to the passengers’ seat.

“You have family here?” Gerard opened the back door, and two surprised faces stared back at him.

“The fuck is this?” The man inside asked.

“He's our new translator.” Tony opened the driver side door. “Frank, this is Sid, and that’s Missy. Missy carelessly waved as she shoveled a handful of granola in her mouth.

“Make room for him!” Tony ordered. Sid moved himself over in the middle seat, squishing Missy up against the car door, making her spill crumbs on her lap.

Gerard buckled himself into the cramped Fiat. Everyone’s body heat had built up causing the air to be thick and hot with breath. The car began down the street.

Sid kept staring at Gerard in a way that made him feel uncomfortable. The way his eyes berated him from head to toe with, what seemed like, disgust make Gerard wanted to jump out of the moving car. He didn’t even have to look directly at Sid to tell he was still staring, he just had to look at his daunting reflection in the mirror of the car to see that he continued to kill him with his gaze.

“Lay it off, Sid!” Tony yelled as he spotted him in the rear-view mirror. Gerard could not have been more grateful.

“What!?” Sid was furious. “Now we’re picking up French swingers at the Eiffel Tower and taking directions from them too!”

“Shut the hell up! First off, Frank is American, he’s just fluent in French, and second, he’s not a fucking swinger.”

“You’re not a swinger, right?” Whitney asked.

“No.” He and the rest of the car laughed. “It’s best to be in a relationship if you’re a swinger.”

Missy scoffed. “So, you’re saying that no one’s been lucky enough to reel in your fine ass?” Sid elbowed her gently, showing his girlfriend how uncomfortable he was with the conversation.

“Well, one.” Gerard smiled.

“Oh, tell me about her!” Whitney turned around in her seat to face Gerard. There was nothing like a good love story to comfort her heart.

“His name is... Maxim.” He didn’t know where the name came from. 

“Oh, my goodness! I’m so sorry,” Whitney put her hand over her mouth and rubbed at her face feverishly. “I just assumed that you—”

“It’s okay.” Gerard assured. “We met in high school.”

XXI

The day Gerard met Frank had been relatively mundane. It was a shitty day at school, attempting and barely succeeding at maintaining his 4.0 GPA made even shittier when he got home to find his mother and father not been home from work yet. He always got home from school before his parents, but it had been a scorching 101 degrees in Chula Vista and his parents had two strict rules: No turning up or down the thermostat without permission, and no calling while they were at work. The rationale for these rules were that the air conditioning and heater systems were expensive to run every day, and blue color bosses didn’t like it when their workers took phone breaks.

So there Gerard sat on the vinyl couch shirtless with the television on Law and Order and a bottle of orange Sunkist as he tried not to die of heatstroke. He used a pile of his mother’s magazines to fan himself as he waited for his brother’s school bus to arrive. If he was going to melt, he would love to do it with Mikey.

A knock came at the door. Well, not really a knock, more like a hail of pounding and fists slamming on the front door with a sporadic bell chime here and there. Gerard jumped in fright, nearly spilling his drink and giving himself a heart attack.

If there was anything Gerard’s mother had taught him, it was not to open the door for strangers, so he stayed on the couch and let the pounding pass. He was sure that they would in time.

But the banging got louder, even though Gerard thought they couldn’t. It sounded like an entire SWAT team had been trying to get into his house, and he couldn’t stand it. When he clamped his hands over his ears, he could feel his pulse quickening and under it all: The noise, the heat, the fear; he felt he could pass out. 

He couldn’t tell how, but under the fortress of stress, he could hear yelling coming from the door. “Help! Please, Help me!” It was a young boy, he could tell. “Please, anyone, there gonna get me!” He wailed in tears, and Gerard could hear it all: The same type of noises Sonja would show him four years later.

Gerard ran to the door feeling fear for the other boy instead of himself. He didn’t even bother looking through the peephole.

The boy came stumbling through the open door in a bustling mess of flying fists and unbalanced legs. With the grace of a newborn giraffe, he fell on Gerard, knocking them both down over the threshold of the house. The boy pulled his legs in the door frame and kicked the ajar door closed with a menacing slam.

As he scanned the boy’s face, under his busted lip, bruised cheek, and bloodied nose, he recognized him. No name stepped forward in his mind and claimed the boy. If he had to guess, he might have been a kid he had seen at school but never talked to. If he had to guess, he thought he might have seen him in the math building at lunch for tutoring. If he had to guess, the boy was probably the one being tutored. Even though his assumptions led him to believe he himself was the one of the higher caliber, that didn’t stop him from finding him gorgeous—even with his wounds.

The boy looked up at Gerard recognizing the shock and helplessness in his expression and meeting it sevenfold. The moisture from each other’s skin met and made them stick to each other. Blood and tears ran from the boy’s face onto the bare skin under the cuff of Gerard’s shorts, and he seemed to apologize for it with his eyes.

“Come on.” Gerard nudged him on the arm. “Get up.” He requested, as he slid out from under him. “Follow me.” He gestured with his hand and lead the boy to his kitchen.

Gerard saw that the boy walked with a limp and tried patting his face dry with the thin fabric of his white tank top. Gerard remembered that he himself had been shirtless, and because of that, a whole other level of tension had been added.

“Sit.” He patted his hand up on the kitchen counter, and the boy followed his directions.

“Do you go to King’s?” Gerard asked as he opened the freezer door and pulled out a bag of frozen peas.

“Yeah.” The boy’s voice was shattered by his emotions.

“You’ll be a junior when we go back in July?” Gerard had always hated the year-round schedule the Chula Vista schools operated on. He tossed the boy the bag.

“Yeah.”

“Same.” He ran to the closet and reached for the first aid kit and the bottle of isopropyl alcohol. The bleeding in the boy’s nose had stopped by the time Gerard returned.

“I’m Frank, by the way.” He cleared his throat. “I think I’ve seen you tutoring in the math building before.”

“Oh.” He grabbed a dish towel and soaked it in alcohol. “Did I tutor you once or something?” The question was more for small talk. He figured if he had sat at the same desk as Frank and helped him with his math homework, been that close to Frank, he wouldn’t have forgotten about it. He might have even developed a crush on him by now.

Frank scoffed. “No! I do the tutoring, stupid.” It was a wonder to Gerard that a few seconds before, this boy had just been bawling his eyes out on his front porch. His snappy comments came second nature.

“How was I supposed to know that?” He removed Frank’s hand from his face and set the peas on the counter next to him. He pressed the rag to his face with no warning.

“Shit!” Frank cried from the stinging pain that jetted down the side of his face. “You weren’t asking the right questions.” He laughed. “Come on. I can hear Law and Order playing over there. Do you not learn anything from watching it?”

“It’s nothing like the real world.” He wiped the blood from Frank’s face using the end of the rag he had wet with water from the tap.

“Then what do they base it off?” Frank was snarky. Gerard could dig that.

“Whatever, dude.” He began walking away from him to throw the cloth in the laundry room hamper.

“Hey!” Frank called. “You’re not done yet.” He lifted the cuff of his pant leg and exposed a fresh wound on the side of his leg. Four irritated, open, bleeding holes in his skin in the shape of a dog bite.

Gerard ran back. “Damn!” He ran back to the sink to wash his hands, and as he came back over to Frank, he noticed the trail of blood that followed them to their current location in the house.

Frank propped his leg on the counter and watched as Gerard rummaged through the first aid kit. There was something about looking down at Gerard’s head of scraggly black hair he found somewhat endearing: Like he wouldn’t mind doing it more often. “Are you gonna tell me your name, or—?”

“Shit! Gerard.” He pulled out a tube of Ambesol. “I’m not the best at introductions.” He applied it all over Frank’s bite. “Tell me when you can’t feel it anymore.”

Frank nodded as Gerard opened the cupboard above him. He grabbed a cup from the middle shelf and opened the freezer again. He placed a few ice cubes at the bottom of the cup and filled the rest of it with water from the faucet. He took a long sip and handed the rest to Frank.

“Am I gonna get AIDS if I drink out of that?” Frank joked as he grabbed the cup.

“No, you dimwit. If you would just pay attention in Health class, then maybe you’d know that—” Gerard didn’t know why he was so defensive. It was just in is nature to argue with anything blatantly wrong.

“I’d know that,” Frank cut him off, “Saliva and urine are two bodily fluids that do not transmit the spread of the HIV, and that semen, vaginal fluid, breast milk, and blood are. I’d know that 1/7 cases of HIV in America are in California and the three most densely populated cities in California of people with HIV are San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, which we are about fifteen miles away from. I’d know that the most common demographic of people that have the virus are gay or bisexual, African-American men in their sexual prime, and I meet two out of three of those characteristics. If you’d pay attention in—I don’t know—life, you’d know sarcasm and irony when you saw them.”

Gerard was stunned beyond belief. He had just been burned alive with that roast and there was no coming back from it. All he could do was smile and laugh at himself. Frank had a set of balls on him and drive to memorize statistics and recite them in the same way Gerard would if he were trying to convince his parents to buy him, say, a car. He knew they would get along.

It occurred to him what Frank had just said.: “I’d know that the most common demographic of people who have the virus are gay or bisexual, African-American men in their sexual prime, and I meet two out of three of those characteristics.” Judging by Frank's milky complexion and his limp hair, Gerard was willing to bet that the characteristic he didn’t fit was that he was not black.

“Same.” Gerard said. Admitting it to Frank wasn’t a big deal considering he had been seen in the King’s Castle High School’s Gay Straight Alliance a few times. Wasn’t being in the room where a GSA happens coming out enough? Also, if Gerard decided to become Frank’s suitor one day, it be nice for him to know any feelings Frank might feel towards him had the potential to be met with reciprocity.

“I figured.” Frank finished the water and had been sucking on ice.

Gerard sputtered random syllables in surprise.

“My leg’s numb now.” Frank announced.

“Good.” Gerard washed his hands again in the sink. “Fucker.” He whispered under his breath.

From the first aid kit, he pulled out a needle which he had sterilized by wiping it in an alcohol pad. He threaded it with black thread. “How did this happen, anyway?” He asked Frank a question to distract him from the pain he knew he would still feel.

“I was walking home from school yesterday, and I saw this girl alone on the street, and we were about to enter National City, so I figured I’d—Fuck!” Gerard sprayed the bite with Bactine. “I figured I’d walk with her just in case any creep tried to make a move on her. So, I run up to her, we walk and talk for a little bit and then we get to her house and she kisses me on the cheek goodbye.” Gerard began to sew the largest gash in Frank’s leg. Frank tried dipping his hand in the melting ice. “She said that she’d like it very much if we did the same the next day. So, today I meet her outside of the school, and walk her home, and when we got to her house in National City, the girl’s boyfriend was on the other side of the door with his goons and a German Shepard. They beat me up real bad and sicked the dog on me, and I ran back and banged on the door of the first house in my neighborhood.”

Gerard had almost finished sewing. “You ran all the way here from Nasty City in this weather?”

“Yup!”

“And you’re alive?”

“Not on the inside.”

“Shit!” Gerard snapped the thread off the stitches. “Sounds like the plot of The Outsiders.”

Frank laughed. “You’re telling me!”

XXII

Whitney laughed at the smile on Gerard’s face as he told their story. “Where’s Maxim today?”

“Back in California, buried in his parent’s yard.”

Everyone gasped.

“Oh my goodness. How did he pass?”

“We were robbed at gunpoint. Both of us were shot. Only I survived.” This had been the first time Gerard had ever talked about Frank’s death on purely friendly terms. There had never been a person who had sat down with Gerard and asked him about what he was going through: Not a nurse at the hospital, not a detective, not a person at the funeral. No one.

“That must be horrible!” Whitney confessed. “I don’t know what I’d do with myself.”

“How long ago was that?”

Gerard sighed, trying to make his answer seem more believable. “Maybe a week ago.”

Sid laughed. “What the fuck are you doing in Paris if your lover just died?” Missy elbowed him back.

“Living my life.” Gerard meant every thorn coming from his jaded speech. He didn’t need Sid to stomp on his grief. 

XXIII

The group of friends led them to a niche café on the northside of Paris, near their hotel room. The café’s specialty was authentic crepes drizzled in whatever the customer asked for.

Tony lead the group to a table just outside of the café and Gerard sat down. “So, Frank,” he told him, “since you’re going to help us around the city today, and because you’re so great, anything you want is on us. All you have to do is hold the table.”

Gerard nodded. “Thanks. I’ll take a black coffee if that’s alright.” It had been a little chilly outside and his mime-suit, as he had thought, hadn’t been enough protection from the rising winds.

“Sure. We’ll be right back.” The crew walked inside.

He had the entire table to himself and saw the perfect opportunity to check his book. With the most inconspicuous series of movements, he proceeded to take out his notebook and flip to the second page.

03/09/04

La Petite Rouge Hotel, 318 Lafayette street, Paris, France.

Antonio Lauren  
Whitney Ambrosia  
Sidney Mercado  
Michele Johnson

Let them drown.

Charles Lepour

Defend yourself.

It was hard to say he was happy his suspicions were true seeing as he quite liked some of the people on his list, granted, he didn’t know who Charles was. He knew these kills would be harder on him than Angel’s had been the day before.

He looked in the café through the glass windows. From his seat, he could see Whitney and Tony in line squabbling just before they reached the register. They stopped for a second to allow each other to order. He found it odd neither Whitney nor Tony had trouble communicating with the barista at all. Although he could not hear them, words seemed to flow effortlessly from both of their lips and they didn’t use hand gestures to motion for what they wanted to order. The barista smiled at them as if he knew them; like they were regulars there.

The question of why they hadn’t asked him to come with him to the register to order for them in French filled his mind, and the only, somewhat, sensible answer he could come up with was that they planned on doing something immoral to him. That might even be why they were on his list. It would make sense that they would pretend to be nice to him; invite him in to have personal conversations. It was exactly what he had done with Angel. The only difference with them was they probably didn’t feel a thing when Gerard or any other person before him shared their stories. If that was so, then he wouldn’t feel bad about offing them, especially when his own life would be affected in the mix of it all.

When Tony and Whitney had finished paying, they stepped aside and waited for their drinks to be made. All four of them stood on the other side of the counter chatting amongst themselves. Gerard could barely avert his hatred-filled eyes as he watched them. 

The only thing that could possibly distract him from his rage was Frank, and suddenly, there he was making their coffee behind the counter. Just the sight of his face put Gerard at ease. Even with his stressed expression as he operated the coffee machines and added in the crèmes and favors of the others’ coffees, his snarky little smile still poked through and melted away all of Gerard’s worries. He leaned forward to get a better look at him.

With his hand, he formed letters in sign language. Gerard could remember the one summer they had spent in the library reading any book that struck their interest. One day, Gerard had picked out a book on American sign language. He pulled from the memories of that summer to interpret what Frank was trying to tell him.

“TRUST YOUR GUT.” He told him before walking behind another barista to deliver the finished coffees. When he emerged on the other side of the person, Frank had been gone. The bunch grabbed their drinks and made their way back to the table as if nothing had happened.

Tony’s voice could be heard as the group exited the building. “…And that bit about him being a swinger! Genius!” Gerard could hear him whisper.

That was all he needed to make him want to go for blood.

“Here you go, sir.” Missy handed him his coffee and took the seat across from him. He murmured a thank you and slipped his book back into his bag. The rest of the group sat down.

“So,” Tony began, “it’s about 6:45 right now, and the sun is going to set in about thirty minutes, and we heard talk about a party down south at this place called the Little Red Hotel and we heard that they were going all night.”

“How does that sound?” Whitney asked.

Gerard took a sip of his drink and nodded his head.

“Alright.” Tony did the same. “We’ll start heading over there when were done here.”

He set his coffee back on the table. “So, the sign says this place is pretty famous for its crepes.”

“Yeah.”

“How come none of you guys got one?”

Tony looked shocked as he squinted in confusion. “Huh?”

“The crepes. None of you got them.”

“Oh! That’s because we got them yesterday.”

“Oh.”

XXIV

By the time they had got to the hotel, it had already been dark. The traffic in the city had been moderate and to Gerard surprise, he could hear the blurred baselines of music as they parked in front of the pool area of the hotel. 

The neon light of La Petite Rouge Hotel coated everyone in a haze of red light. There were all kinds of young people dancing in and around the water with drinks and drugs of every kind running through their veins. 

There wasn’t a single person who would opened the pool gate when Whitney rapped her fist on it. 

“Over here. Help!” Gerard called, trying to be of assistance. Under the boosted music, no one could be heard. 

“Fuck it!” Sid grabbed at the chain linked fence and began climbing it. The rest of the group soon followed with a hint of hesitation and fear that someone might catch them. When they all made it over the fence, they all stood, winded and looking for something to do. 

Missy and Whitney had run over to the drink table by the DJ booth, while Gerard, Sid, and Tony had stayed behind leaning up against the fence with one foot through the links. 

“Drinks are on me!” Tony yelled over the music. “What do you guys want?”

Sid shook his head. 

“A cosmopolitan!” Gerard yelled. 

“Huh?”

“A cosmopolitan!” The music was too loud. 

“Oh!” Tony ran over through the clear path to the bartender’s table that the people had made through the crowd.

Gerard watched him as he order yet again without his help. When his finished cocktail had been made and it sat in front of him on the table, Gerard saw him as he reached into his back pocket to pull out a small paper envelope. He ripped the top off, throwing the trash over his shoulder and pouring the contents of it in his drink. He stirred it with the end of the decorative umbrella sitting on the edge of the glass. 

His ring made his finger itch with the knowledge that it had been roofie powder. That same itch told him to let it happen. He placed his faith in the Saint and rubbed at his finger to ease the sensation. 

Tony made his way back through the crowd, nearly spilling his own drink when a girl’s wayward hand carelessly struck him on the chest. He handed the glass to Gerard with a smile on his face as if he hadn’t seen a thing. They both stared down at it for a second, and without a second thought, Gerard downed it all in one go. 

“Boy, don’t you just love date-rape in all your cosmos?” Gerard questioned.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Not long after he had drunk his drink, Gerard found Missy and Whitney out on the makeshift dance floor. They invited him to come dance with them under the false pretenses that he would protect them from any creep who tried grabbing them in the absence of their boyfriends. He knew their intentions were just as bad as his own, but he favored the company of them over their men. 

It would seem like an eternity of dancing with those girls which involved occasionally threatening to push them in the pool, stealing samples of appetizers the people carried around on trays, and bullshitting with the girls.

Whitney beckoned for Gerard to come closer to him. “Back in the café, I gave everyone ecstasy. Later tonight, we’re gonna go up to the roof and swim in the water tank. It’ll feel amazing!” She told him.

Gerard laughed a light-headed laugh. “That’s cool!” It seemed he was losing his balance. He knew the drugs had begun to take effect, and here was nothing he could do to fight it. The last thing he felt before his vision went black was the wet slab of concrete hitting his face as he fell. 

“Go get Tony and Sid!” Missy called to Whitney. “He’s out.”

XXV

Frank didn’t know where he was; Purgatory, maybe. It definitely was not heaven. He was no longer a person living on the world, he was more a spirit that manifested itself in the iteration of what he had been when he spent his time on Earth. No blood flowed in his veins, and no air filled his lungs. 

The feeling that settled in his soul was one of foul origin. He felt if he had tears to cry, they would be pouring from his eyes. As he watched over his own body on the city street, he tried to scream with his non-existent voice once he had seen Gerard fall to his side. He felt his knees buckle as he fell to the ground and laid himself over Gerard. 

It killed him even more to not feel the boyish patches of peach fuzz adorning the sides of Gerard’s face when he passed his fingers over them. Even so, he tried with all his strength to press down on his stomach to try and stop the bleed. His hands did nothing more than sit on top of his living skin. 

Frank felt a hand on his shoulder as soft and as gentle as a freshly de-seeded bud of cotton. He looked up, and Our Lady of Guadeloupe had been staring down at him with a serene grin that somehow still managed to show her concern for the matter. 

“Please, Mother Mary!” Frank cried as he brought his hands to a clasp. “Save him.” He wept, placing one hand on her hand. He had felt her purity seeping into him. “He can’t die.” Her robe barely graced his own nude form. 

A single tear sprang from the pit of her eye. “He shall not die, my child. No son of mine shall die like this. He shall bring forth a new era of life to the Heavens when he does.”

Frank didn’t need to understand what she had said. It was enough for him to hear that he would not die. 

“Forgive me, my child. I must now return to the almighty land.” Our Lady of Sorrows left with a trail of tears that shrouded her glowing virginity with a cloud of fear. 

Just as her blinding light had disappeared from the street, a group of women had come to Gerard’s aid. They ran out in their thigh-high boots and their g-strings and stooped down to their level squealing and moaning at the sight. Frank stepped back to let them intervene.

One girl wearing all red had stuck her hands over Gerard’s wound just as she should have and the bleeding began to stop. She was intent on saving his life with a look of concentration on her face. For a second, she gazed up at Frank with eyes of flaming scarlet. He jumped back in fright. 

“Leave me—Suh-save Frank.” He could hear Gerard’s attempts to save him, and it broke his spirit. 

“I’m sorry baby, Frank’s dead.” A curly haired woman explained. 

“My God. We’re losin’ him! Delilah, call Tito!”

“Shut the fuck up, Donna. I know what the fuck I’m doing!” The lifesaver yelled. 

“God Sonja! I’m just trying to help.” Frank wasn’t sure he wanted her to help. There was something about those eyes that made him question her humanity.

Sonja’s strength alone was enough to keep Gerard alive in time for an ambulance to be called and arrive. He managed to squeeze his way on the vehicle headed for the hospital just before the aluminum doors closed the rest of the strippers off. None of them came. They were too busy talking to the police. Nothing in the world would make Frank leave Gerard.

Frank hadn’t even dared to look at his body before the police had zipped it away in a bag. He didn’t know if he would be able to handle the sight of his own face mangled and blown, covered in a shawl of blood, grey matter and skull. He would have vomited if he saw his jaw hanging at his chest and his eyes protruding out of their sockets in the mess of gore that was his visage. 

He didn’t even have to try not to think about his own body. He had been too focused on keeping up with the team of doctors as they ran to him into the operating room. It surprised him when he didn’t feel the dry, burning sensation he had always felt when he ran for long periods of time. 

“Get outta the way, people!” A nurse yelled as he and his team pushed Gerard’s gurney through the wide hallways of the hospital. A faint alarm accompanied by a flashing light sounded through the halls. “We’ve got an emergency.” 

“Shit!” The youngest nurse cursed under her breath. “I can see this kid’s guts!” She was nearly winded.

“Yeah.” They turned the corner. “I give this guy a fifteen percent chance of surviving through the night.” They passed the gurney over to the surgical team. 

“Damn.” 

Frank followed him in.

He had been hooked up to a number of machines, all beeping and humming alongside the din of the doctors trying to intubate and begin patching Gerard up. 

“Juliet, get the stereo.” The head surgeon ordered as she pulled on her sterile gloves. The nurse ran over to the corner of the room, pressing the play button of the radio. A quiet violin began from the boom box, and the rest of the doctors silenced themselves. 

Frank couldn’t comprehend what was happening to Gerard. The bright surgical lights stunned him like a moth. His entity stood beside Gerard in a daze. The music in his ears turned to a dull hum of energy that became louder and louder as he became less and less lucid. 

When the ringing had stopped, he was standing over Gerard in his recovery room. He had been laying in his bed so peacefully despite what had happened to him. There had been IV lines in his arms that Frank knew would scare him when he woke, and his hair had been left in a surgical net. 

Frank recognized the woman who walked into his room as the same surgeon who had performed his operation on him when he had first arrived at the hospital. She entered the room with soft clacking of her heeled shoes on the sterile floor. 

“Gerard.” She called, her voice as soft and as gentle as her steps. “Are you awake, sir?”

Gerard opened his eyes as wide as he could (which wasn’t very wide.) He nodded his head.

“Well, good afternoon! My name is Dr. Wallace.” She stuck her head out for him. He grabbed at her finger and shook it weakly. “I performed your two procedures.”

“Two?” Gerard croaked. 

Dr. Wallace nodded. “You came into the E.R with a couple of gunshot wounds. The first surgery was done to save your life, but it resulted in severe internal bleeding. So, we went in a second time to correct our mistakes. Understand?” 

He nodded. The second surgery had come as a surprise to Frank as well. He hadn’t been there to witness it. 

“There are two detectives waiting for you outside of the room, so I’m just going to perform a standard examination to make sure that you are suitable to speak with them. Sound good?”

He nodded again. He really couldn’t understand anything she was saying on account of the narcotics clouding his mind. 

She began by removing the bed sheet over the majority of his body. He shivered at the cold air he had been exposed to. She then lifted his gown above his chest, exposing his abdomen. Frank knew Gerard didn’t exactly have a six-pack or even a flat stomach for that matter, but the swollen mess that was his stomach shocked him. 

Down his line of symmetry, he had a large scar that was stapled all the way from the base of his pelvis to the start of his ribs. His skin was bruised red and purple with leaked blood, and a circular bruise around the origin of the gunshot had formed. His abdomen had been distended in a way that made him look slightly pregnant, and under any other circumstances, Frank might have laughed.

“Does this hurt?” Dr. Wallace pressed a pair of finger down on his skin. 

“Just pressure.” Gerard responded.

“Good, good. How about here?” She did the same thing on many other spots on his body, each with the same response. The doctor cleared him and the detectives were allowed in his room.

Gerard tried to sit himself higher on his bed as the two detectives entered his room. 

“Good afternoon Mr. Way. My name is Detective Lolita Connolly, and this is my partner Theodore Landon. If you’re up to it, we’d like to ask you a few questions pertaining to the incident that took place on the night of March fourth.”

He nodded. 

“So, I’ll begin by asking what you to had been doing prior to the shooting.” She pulled out a notepad and a pen from her blazer pocket.

“My buddy Frank and I,” he coughed horsely, “We’d gone to the movies to see ‘Dawn of the Dead.’ and we were taking the shortcut home through Broadway St., and there were all of these strip joints. Before I knew it, there was a man standing in front of us with a gun asking for our wallets. He—“ His voice was eerily emotional.

“Go on.” Detective Connolly urged.

“He tried to be the hero. Frank tried to stand up for us. And the second he did, I knew we were dead.” 

Frank was hit by a tidal wave of accountability. He was dead because of his need to be the hero. If he would have just set his pride aside for just a second and listened to Gerard, he would still be alive; Gerard wouldn’t be in pain. 

“Frank, give him your fucking wallet.” 

“Frank, give him your fucking wallet.” 

The words played over and over in his head: The clenching of his voice, the anger in his eyes, the hope that he might listen. Gerard’s cry had been the last thing Frank had heard before he had realized he was dead. He would never forgive himself for what he had done. 

“Thank you, son.” Detective Connolly ended as their questioning came to a close. “Sorry for your loss.” Frank found it ironic that she had called him “son.” She couldn’t have been older than thirty-five herself. 

“Thank you.” 

“Do you plan on attending Frank’s funeral?” Detective Landon asked.

“Funeral?” Gerard furrowed his brow. 

“I’m guessing you weren’t aware. You two seemed close. It’s tomorrow at 11:00 am in the Our Lady of the Rosary Cathedral.”

“I had no idea.”

“The family invited us, but we were too busy to go. I don’t suppose we couldn’t give you a quick ride over to the church if you wanted to go.” He turned to Connolly with a needy look in his eyes. 

She sighed. “Detective Landon and I do have the day off tomorrow, so I guess it can be arranged.”

The next morning, the nurse gave Gerard his prescription for pain killers and antibiotics at his request to voluntarily check himself out of the hospital. The two detectives had been waiting outside of his room. 

Detective Landon handed him a plastic grocery bag full of clothes when he had walked in. “I know your clothes are ruined, so I brought you an old tux I had lying around.” He placed it on the bed next to him. “The last time I wore this was my high school graduation party, so I figured it might fit a young man like you.”

Gerard stood up next to his bed with the cane the nurse had also brought for him. “Thanks a lot.” He groaned from the pain of standing that had stung his patched-up leg. Once he had dresses himself in the all black suit and tie, they had driven him to the church. They rode in Detective Connolly’s personal car. No one said a word the entire ride over. 

Frank could see the solemn look on her face as she drove. It was a look that told the world she was imagining herself in Gerard’s position; a look that said she had a Frank of her own: someone she would miss just as much as Gerard did Frank. 

They waved him a last farewell as they dropped him off in front of the steps of the grand cathedral. He stepped inside. Frank felt himself slipping away to a higher place. 

XXVI

Gerard’s eyes opened to the ratty ceiling of a motel room that smelled of cigarette smoke and illegal abortions. His limbs had been spread out like a starfish on the bed and his clothes had still been on properly. He began to sit up and as he did, he remembered that he had been drugged. Death had been working her magic, it seemed, and Gerard felt no physical repercussions. It comforted him to see his bag had been sat behind him on the bed.

He heard the faint footsteps under the dying sound of club music and laid himself out the same way he had woken up. With closed eyes, he could still hear the opening and closing of the door and the sound of two pairs of feet entering the room. 

“It’s good doing business with you Charles!” He recognized Tony’s voice and the name Charles. He heard what he imagined was Charles pulling a wad of cash from his pocket and handing it to Tony. “Ah, Ah, Charles! This one’s American! He costs two thousand.” Charles unfolded and reluctantly gave more money with a roll in his eyes. “Have fun. We will be on the roof when you two are finished.” The door closed. 

All Gerard needed to hear was the unclasping of belt hardware to cause him to open his eyes and jump up and grab for the gun in his bag. He cocked it and kneeled over the edge of the mattress. 

“Put your fucking hands in the air.” Charles obliged. There was a certain fear in his face telling Gerard that he had found Tony and his group of friends to be a reliable source for sex and none of his victims had ever woken up on him before. What a sick bastard. Gerard felt nothing as he pulled the trigger, and Charles fell dead at his feet.

XXVIII

Tony climbed his way up to the roof with a kind of gusto he had worked at for months. The ladder to the Little Red Hotel’s roof had a greater distance between rails , therefore requiring a lot of upper body strength from the user to pull themselves up properly. By now, he had been climbing the ladder like a monkey with great dexterity and bicep strength. 

“Tony? Is that you?” Whitney called from inside the water tank. Hers, Sid’s, and Missy’s laugher flowed out through the opening at the top of the tank. Tony was surprised they were able to open it without him. It had to weigh at least two thousand pounds.

“Yeah.” He answered as he stripped down naked. The sound of his bare feet patting the floor up to the tank was barely audible. He climbed the service ladder and jumped in feet first. Luckily, no one had been sitting where he had landed. The water rose above their head for a second as the water level accounted for the volume of Tony’s body.

“The water feels do good, doesn’t it?” Whitney remarked. Liquids on her skin filled her with a feeling more than euphoric: Like running a finger over the petal of an orchid, like her whole body was having an orgasm.

“It’s nice.” Tony responded as he began treading water in his place.

The gang continued to swim around in the ten-thousand-gallon tank, laughing, playing games and wearing off their buzzes. Only around fifteen minutes after they had started, Missy had heard shoes on the roof under them.

“What was that?” She asked.

Tony wiped his hair that clung to his face. “Charles? Are you done? That soon?” He asked as he swam under the spot from which the little moonlight emanated in.

There was no response.

“Charles, you’re more than welcome to join us if you want, buddy!”

The footsteps grew louder. The sound of shoes on the ladder scared them all.

“Fuck!” Sid yelled. “It’s maintenance. Someone complained. Which one of you pissed in here?”

“No one!” Whitney whispered.

A shadow was cast over the surface of the water in the shape of an arm. The person didn’t ask if anyone was inside, they just reached for the lid. Miraculously, the lid began to move just from the sheer strength of the person alone.

“Hey! We’re in here pal!” Tony called out.

The face that stared down at them made them all jump in surprise.

“I know.” Gerard said as he resumed pulling the cover over the opening.

“NO!” Tony yelled as he tried pawing his way up the side of the tank. There was not a ladder or any steps on the inside for people to use to get out. People weren’t supposed to get in in the first place. “Come on! We’re sorry!”

“Tell that to the Devil.” Gerard heaved the cover closed with the help of the Saint. There was no way he could have done it alone.

From all angles around the tank, the four of them could be heard screaming and banging against the walls. He could hear them crying and shouting and pounding.

“Please!”

“Come on! It’s not funny!”

“We’re sorry.”

“I can’t die like this! I can’t die like this, Frank!”

Frank. He had told them his name was Frank. He had to be reminded of that. It didn’t just linger like some facts do.

The Saint stood across from him. Her robe reminded him so much of the robe the Virgin of Guadalupe wore, only hers was black and grey. Even though she didn’t have eyes, Gerard knew that if she did, they would be on him with a shameful gaze.

“How does it feel?” She asked him in Spanish. He didn’t feel it was a genuine question; more a conversation starter to pass the time before they all drowned or suffocated.

“How does what feel?” He responded in her native language.

“Making a deal with the Devil?”

“You would know.” He wanted something to occupy his mouth. Not food. Not something to drink. He needed a cigarette. He bit on his fingers for the moment.

“I won’t be the end of things.”

The end of things? “The end of things?”

“You are part of the last demonic deal that will ever be made.”

“What do you mean? Forever?”

“Yes, my son. After the devil is done with you, she will never need to make another deal for as long as her and God shall exist.”

It had never occurred to Gerard that there was a God. If the Devil could exist, heal, and interfere with the real world, then surely God could too. Gerard asked himself why he didn’t in some cases.

“Have you met God before.”

She sighed. “Yes, my son. Once. When I was alive, I was a doctor in my village in Juarez, Mexico. I was a God-fearing woman, but when my patients would come to me beyond help, I would turn to Brujeria: A form of witchcraft. My community loved me. Every man wanted to take my hand in marriage because they noticed how great I was. I was intelligent, dedicated, and I even bore an uncanny resemblance to the Heavenly Mother. A time came where a horrible plague spread across the town and it took over me. I died a horrible death: coughing, sweating, and covered in boils and lesions. The only time I met God was when he told me that I would never make it through to heaven. He told me I would never become an angel, never be a saint. He told me that a woman who defied him and the laws of death to do his job could never look so much like his Virgin Mary. Before he banished me to Hell, he took away my flesh so no other person would look at me and see Mary. I forgave him of course, as that’s what he would want me to do. I know what I did was wrong, and I’m suffering because of that.”

“God did that to you?”

She nodded. “I suppose He will have a similar reaction when he meets you. Son, pray you get to keep your skin. I only wear this cloak so that on the off chance we reunite, he can see what I have become despite what he has done to me.”

The screams had stopped from within the tank. The Saint could feel their souls beginning to escape their bodies. She inhaled their souls the same way she had done Angel’s.

“You did an incredible job tonight. I’ll make sure to tell her.”

Gerard smiled. She had left.

He climbed down the fire escape and began walking back to the hotel room, planning on making sure his bag was still in the room. When he saw the bag on his bed waiting for him, he was relieved.

The last thing he did in Paris was tuck his gun back in his bag. He slammed his body on the bed, and the last thought that filled his mind before he closed his eyes was about where he would end up when he woke up in the morning.


	4. IV

The chandelier above Gerard was all too familiar. A sort of comfort settled in his stomach at the realization that he was in the restaurant from his dreams again. The flute of champagne with the golden edge sat in front of him beside a nearly-gone dish of pasta. The hearty dish taunted him. He wondered why he could never eat in these dreams. The presentation of all the food there was always superb from what he had seen the other guest order, but he himself had never gotten to experience eating the food. He had in that moment been full as ever and had no need for more food, the thought just irritated him. 

When he had come to think of it, he hadn't really done much eating when he was awake either. He wondered if he was just so focused on his job that he hadn't found a need or time for meals, or if it was the ring. 

“Here you are, madam.” He heard the maître d'hôtel over his shoulder. 

“Thank you, sir.” Teresa had sat down next to him. “Good evening, Gerard.” 

“Good evening, Teresa.” He smiled at her expectantly. He was waiting for Sonja to arrive.

“Sonja had a meeting today, so she asked me to speak with you.”

“Alright.” 

She folded her hands on the table. Gerard had noticed her new attire. It had been a burgundy suit with all-white emblems and medals pinned at her shoulders and breast, almost like a military uniform, but not quite. “I understand that yesterday was the first day you had an assignment involving multiple targets.” 

Gerard nodded. 

“We were told that you handled it beautifully.” She grinned. “You should be proud. The Saint of Death rarely gives compliments.” 

He remembered what she had said the night before. It made him curious. “She told me a lot last night.”

“About what?”

“How she came to be. She told me there was a God, and I'm the last deal Sonja will ever make. That I’m special, somehow. Is that true?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. Sonja has mentioned a few times how important you are, but I don’t know exactly what it is about you, though.”

“Oh.”

“To tell you the truth, I’m just as new to this as you are.” Teresa reached for Gerard’s champagne. “I’ve only been in Hell about a week longer than you have.”

“We’re in Hell?” Gerard was surprised.

“Oh, no no no! Right now, we’re in your head. You’re dreaming. Whenever we go to Sonja’s office; that’s Hell.”

Gerard liked the title of being the only living man to have been to Hell and live to tell about it. Then, he realized that he had not been the only person, and he surely couldn't tell anyone about it. 

“So, are you a demon?” He asked her.

“Better. Try, ‘First Lady of Hell’.”

“First Lady? So, you and Sonja—”

She grinned a wicked grin. “Yup.”

“Damn! How did you manage to seduce the devil?”

“That is another story for another time.” She stood up from the table. “Enjoy yourself; the music. Wake up when you're ready.” They saluted each other goodbye.

Gerard reached for what was left of his glass of champagne. The stain of Teresa's lipstick remained on the edge where she had drank from. He left his seat and made his way out from the center of the maze of dining tables and made his way to the opening of the hallway toward the northern side of the room. 

He followed the faint sounds of piano music that resonated down the walls. The corridor stretched forever, and the music grew louder with each step. There had been vintage style oil lamps adorning the walls, and it was an old habit of Gerard to count them. He counted anything that came in large numbers.

The end of the hallway gave way to a grand southern, Antebellum-style plantation house ballroom with all-white marble floors. At the top of the fire place rested a portrait of a woman sitting with her dog. There was a matching loveseat and single-seater with white tufted lace fabric and gold painted wood. He saw some reflections of all the people dancing in front of the ivory piano in the gilded mirror. The curtains were drawn, and the draping fabric was symmetrical on both sides. The moonlight poured in through the gridded window panes.

He stood on the edge of the room, leaning up against the wall, wary that somehow, his black suit would leave a stain if he lingered for too long. He sipped at his drink and felt nothing in his mouth as he swallowed.

The pianist played a dangerous tune with a four-chord melody with a one-one-two beat. His hands were moving rapidly up and down the keyboard with fierce power and speed despite the use of the sustain pedal, which he had his foot firmly weighted on.

Gerard saw nothing better to do with himself, so he walked over to the piano. He stood behind the pianist and merely observed him. He had thought his playing was aggressive before, but the way he slammed his fingertips down on the keys now looked painful. Almost like he was trying to show off his abilities, but at the same time, he was aggravated someone was watching over him. 

He came to the bridge of the song. The way he danced over the keys and the noises they made were a stepping sequence that worked beautifully with the melody playing in his right hand. Men and woman on the dance floor had been waltzing to his song peacefully when his breakdown came in. 

“Never again. No, not ever again. He’ll give you two shots to the back of the head and we'll all be dead.” He sang it at the top of his lungs, sounding manic and crazed, playing only with the tips of his fingers.

“Never again.” One man broke away from his partner to aid the situation. “Not ever again!” The man grabbed at the player’s hands. “He’ll give him two—” Even with his hands around his wrists, the man couldn't stop the player from playing his chords. “We will all be dead!” Gerard stepped back at the disgusting noises made by all the keys that had fallen out of the piano when the pianist thrust his fists onto the keyboard.

Many other people had come to assist the player down the corridor, most large men who carried the man by his shoulders like a child out of the room. 

“Don't let him do it!” He pointed at Gerard, spitting and flailing his arms. “He's going to overcrowd it down here! He’s not one of us!” His yelling could still be heard down the hallway. 

Next to Gerard stood the first man who came to help. “Don't you mind him.” He said wiping away the blood on his face from where the man had somehow hit him. It stained his white suit in a thick red smear. He was tall with a set of broad shoulders, and what Gerard presumed to be an armory of muscles. He appeared to be the only Asian in the room. 

A woman wearing a long black dress had taken over the piano. The bass end of the keys had been completely decimated, but the upper treble end worked well. She played a song in falsetto and the guests resumed. 

“May I have this dance?” The man asked reaching out for Gerard’s hand. For a second, he was hesitant to respond to his offer. After all. It would be his first dance with anyone—any man—in a public setting. He hadn't even danced with Frank in private, no matter how many times he begged him to when the music was just right and the only people on the floor were too drunk to care about them. How dare he take this man’s offer?

“Yes.” Gerard clasped his hand and they found their way to a comfortable spot on the floor. It was a lazy sort of square waltz they found themselves doing as the gentle music coated their ears in sleep. 

Gerard leaned forward onto the man, resting his head on his chest. The last thing he remembered was the man’s hand twirling his hair.

 

XXIV

Gerard had snapped into his new location at around noon the next day. A tray with wheels was what he used to balance himself as he passed out cups of primary-colored Jell-O—sugar free, of course— to the elderly people at the table sitting around him. 

He directed a red Jell-O at the man to his right, sliding it to him on the table. 

“Hey, Frankie boy! I told you I can’t have strawberry! I’m allergic to strawberries!” He slapped the Jell-O away from him with the back of his hand. 

Gerard looked down at himself and his mint-green scrubs. He could feel his hair tied back in a ponytail. He had to be some kind of nurse.

“Ah, my bad, sir. I’ll just get you a different one. Is blueberry alright?” 

The man nodded a grumpy nod. Gerard slid him a new Jell-O with a disposable spoon. 

“Oh, Frankie,” a woman called to him. “Can I get a lemon! You know how much the Mr. And I love lemons!” 

“Sure, miss.” He handed her a lemon Jell-O, matching her smile with equal enthusiasm.

Another man wearing a similar uniform to Gerard stepped in the room with a clipboard. “Frank!” Gerard turned his head. “It’s break time, I'll take over for you.”

After leaving the cart beside the table, Gerard made his way to the break room. He knew how to get there, unsurprisingly, and stood by his locker in the corner of the room. The combination (a 0-6-0-8 on the padlock) flew from his fingertips, and when he opened the locker door, he found his bag to be the only thing inside. He threw the strap over his shoulder and headed outside for a break after leaving his locker unlocked. It would prevent him from having to open his locker another time when he wanted to put his bag back.

There had been a spot just outside the employee entrance of the building by the staff parking lot that Gerard had felt was quite comfortable, and he leaned up against the planter that surrounded his coworkers’ cars. He pulled out his notebook for the day and noticed something reveal itself from behind the book. It was a pack of Bella Blue menthol cigarettes. Gerard had remembered asking for a cigarette the day before and was glad to see that someone was listening. Underneath the pack sat a silver zippo lighter. He pulled them both about and lit himself a fag. 

The taste of mint filled his mouth as he flipped to the third page of the book. What he saw on the page made him take an extra-long drag on his cigarette. He had to have seen it coming though. The numbers just were not working out. If he wanted to make his quota for the three months, he had calculated that in the ninety-three days he would be on the job, he would need to kill ten or eleven people a day to meet one thousand by June eighth. He just didn’t realize that it would happen all that fast. 

On the page of the day, he found at least fifty names; mostly men he had noticed, all older sounding. He knew it had to do with where he had been working at with all the older people. The task at the very end: Let them burn.

He slipped the lighter in his pocket and tucked all his things away in his bag again before running around to the front of the building to try to find a sign that would give him a clue as to where he was. The humidity in the air that made him sticky-sweat and glued his hair to the back of his neck made him guess somewhere east; Florida, maybe. 

On the front step of the building in a large wooden sign read, “Orlando, Florida’s home for American Veterans.” Under the sign was a smaller sign that told people walking in that the facility had fifty-two residents, and an American flag.

Gerard knew what he was going to do was wrong: Killing Americans who risked their lives to save millions of people that they would never meet. It made him sick to think that he would be slaughtering some of the country’s oldest heroes who. 

After crunching a few numbers in his head, he figured that if an eighteen-year-old man joined the military in 1941, when the US entered the war, they would be eighty-one today. They probably have lost the people they’ve married, had children, grandchildren, and some may even have great-grandchildren. 

He felt like a disgusting human being for what he was about to do.

“Frankie!” His coworker called at him. Gerard nearly snapped his neck as he turned back in fear. “Break’s over. Get in there and supervise them for me. I got some paperwork,” he winked too obviously, “to finish.”

“’Kay. I’ll be right in.” A last drag of his Bella Blue would barely satiate him before he flicked it to the floor and stomped it out with his white tennis shoe. 

“It’s TV time y’all.” A female nurse called with the remote in her hand. “What y’all wanna watch?” 

Channels and show names flew across the room, being yelled so loud that Gerard could hear them as he put his things away from the locker room. TV time was three hours of relaxation in the home and whoever got their choice of show was living like a king.

“Fox!”

“The View!”

“The Price is Right!”

“CNN!”

“HLN!”

“Alright, James. HLN it is. I like that new girl, Soledad.” She placed the remote on top of the TV and left the room with a twisting jive in her shoulders and a scurrying in her feet. “You’ll be okay in here, Frank?”

“Yeah.” And with that, he was alone. 

The residence had a population of about seventy-five percent male, twenty-five percent female, and there was no one who appeared to be under sixty-five. There were a small group of women sitting at the back table that chatted amongst themselves as they knitted. 

“Bombshell tonight!” The announcer on the television shouted. “A tragic accident has struck France in the night!”

“Aw shit! Is that Nancy Grace? I hate that bitch!” The yellow Jell-O man proclaimed.

“Shut the fuck up Ashley, I wanna hear this!” James yelled.

Gerard laughed at their squabble. 

“The bodies of an unidentified group of young adults have been found floating naked and dead in the water tank on the roof of a hotel near Paris.”

He sat up straight in his seat and leaned forward. He hadn’t noticed it, but as he sat in the stray chair he had pulled aside, he had been tapping his foot on the floor just as fast as his heart had been pounding. 

“Another body of a man had also been found shot to death in one of the rooms underneath! Is this a coincidence? I think not! Joining me today to discuss this is CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. Anderson, what did I leave out?”

A second panel came on the television and Anderson Cooper cleared his throat. “Good morning, Nancy. Thank you for having me on. The coroner’s report shows each of the four individuals had Ecstasy in their toxicology exam before they died in the water tank that had been sealed. The weight of that lid exceeds the weight of an average man, so it would be very unlikely that the group of people could close it from within the tank, which had no ladders inside.”

“So, the French police suspect foul play?”

“Absolutely, Nancy.”

“Thank you, Anderson.”

Gerard stood up and ran over to the remote. He changed the channel to the next station. “That’s enough of that.” He whispered to himself.

The whole world was aware of his actions. Thank God they didn’t know who he was or why he was doing it. The fact that he was chaotic enough to piss off Nancy Grace hit him, hard. 

“Judgement in favor of the plaintiff. Mr. Picazzo read your contracts before you sign them!” Judge Judy informed.

Gerard scrambled back to his seat in a worried mess. It was self-defense, he kept reassuring himself. It was self-defense, and then it was revenge. That was the worst part about it. 

“Frankie.” A man called from his seat at the table. “Come here.” He instructed with a floppy wrist from what might have been a stroke.

“Yes, sir.” He made his way over to the man and squatted next to him in his wheelchair. 

Every limb on his body was awfully thin and veiny from age. He had a number of sporadic scars that ran up and down the visible parts of his arms and ankles. He shook severely. “I had another one of those dreams again last night.”

“Oh.” He acted like he knew what he was talking about. “What happened this time?”

The man sighed. “We were in Germany, and they had surrounded us in our base. I was the lookout that night, and I had been extremely tired the entire day before. It was my first day on the job, and we had been invaded. I stood alone on the top of a tower when they swarmed us. I did nothing. I was frozen up there, and I let all my men die. They had outnumbered us by a lot, and I couldn’t muster the strength to tell anyone on the ground.” He grabbed for Gerard’s hand. “We had been planning a mission that involved getting the Germans on our base so we could eliminate them with a bomb that we had planted in the ground. The detonator was in the tower I was in.” He was crying. “I pushed the button. I killed my regiment. They were good men, all older than me. Who was I to do that?”

“Oh Bill, calm yourself. All you need to do is ask for forgiveness before it’s too late.” The woman sitting next to him suggested.

“Aw, pho-ee! Don’t you think I’ve tried?”

Gerard had been on the edge of sharing tears with the man. Something inside of himself slipping; something that reminded him that it was only a job.

It’s only a job.

Only a job.

Only a job.

One thousand in three months.

A stroke of fear surged its way through his chest.

XXV

“Welcome, families to our monthly PFLAG meeting.” Chelsea’s voice rung through the room with the clarity of a bell. Any other day the PFLAG headquarters would be buzzing with life and tolerance, but there was something about Linda Iero’s presence that sucked any kind of happiness anyone wanted to feel right out of the room.

“How is everyone? I see we have some new faces among the crowd. Come on, introduce yourselves. Don’t be shy.”

A deep hatred hung over Linda’s heart. A hatred for her husband who had brought her to the meeting, a hatred for Gerard for surviving, and a hatred most of all for her son that turned out that way. Every mother, father, grandparent, and sibling in that room could feel it trying to infect them. They wouldn’t let it. 

She sat there with her arms crossed and her jaw clenched. 

Frank Sr. cleared his throat. “My Name is Frank Iero Senior, and this is my wife Linda. Do you mind explaining what the acronym stands for?”

“Hello Frank. Of course I can. PFLAG stands for: Parents and Family of Lesbians and Gays. We are an organization that strives to teach families how to accept and look past their child being gay or transgender. Do you have a queer child?”

“Do we?” Linda scoffed and rolled her fury-filled eyes. 

“We did.” Chelsea nodded along. “Actually, less than a week ago he was killed in San Bernardino. He and his roommate were walking home from the movies and they were both shot. His roommate survived, but Frank Jr. was shot in the head. From what we gathered from the police, just before he had died, he and his roommate were seen kissing. When we went to gather his belongings in his apartment, we discovered that the two boys shared a bed.”

“They were having an affair!” Linda exclaimed. 

“They were in a loving relationship.”

“They were nineteen. He was nineteen! He didn’t know what love was!”

“Linda!”

“No!” Chelsea interjected. “This is good. What were you so concerned about their relationship?”

She grew a defensive look on her face. “I don’t like that Gerard boy.”

“Stop it, Linda. You can’t blame the boy for surviving! Neither of them had a say in anything.” 

“Is that what this is about?” Chelsea asked. 

“Not completely.” She wiped her eye. “I sent him to confirmation classes. He was on honor roll. He tutored kids and studied twenty-four seven. He was a pre-law major! What did I do wrong as a mother to raise someone that could—” frustration filled her throat.

“Nothing.” A parent offered. “You did nothing wrong. There was nothing wrong with Frank from what you described. It seems like you had a great kid on your hands, and I’m sorry for your loss, but you seem to be focusing on the wrong thing here. I feel like you’re holding a grudge on this Gerard kid, but I saw on the news that he was in critical condition a few days ago. Stop focusing on the past. Remember Frank for all of the great that he accomplished and stop beating yourself up over things that you can’t control.”

“Great advice, Clifton. Thank you. Does anyone else have any words to offer to this family.”

Frank made Linda sit through the rest of the meeting for nearly an hour. They discussed upcoming events in the San Diego and Hillcrest area. Many other families gained closure about their queer relatives and Linda absorbed none of it. Frank walked out of the building with an armful of flyers, infographics and even a small rainbow flag button to pin to his lapels. 

“How did you like it?” He asked his wife.

“How did I like what? Listening to the families of a bunch of transvestites and faggots,” She opened her car door. “like Frank.” She added for good measure. 

Frank slammed his car door closed again after opening it only seconds before. “How dare you speak about those kids like that? How dare you say that about my son? Your son!”

She avoided his gaze and lowered herself into the passenger seat. Frank settled in the driver’s side.

“Sometimes, I’m glad that Frank is dead, so he’ll never have to live with your reaction.”

She leaned her head up against the window of the car as it began down the street. 

“Listen to me because I’m only going to say this once.” Frank commanded. “I will give you one month of couple’s therapy. If we can’t work this out in a month, I want a divorce. Understand?”

Her gaze unfocused from stress. 

“Do you understand?!” He conjured his Senior Chief voice.

She breathed a wary sigh. “Yes.”

“Okay. Now what do you want for dinner?”

XXVI

It didn’t take Gerard much longer to figure out he was less like a nurse and more like an orderly.

His superiors would order him to change bed sheets, wash dishes, and deliver meals to some of the residents. It was a fairly easy, yet somehow grueling job. At many points in the day, Gerard found himself having to crack his back and stretch to alleviate the new tension that had formed in his lumbar spine.

Most of the people living in the veterans’ home had fought in the military during World War II. A few of the younger people were higher ranking commanders and generals that lead men in the Vietnam War. Some of the women were the wives of the soldiers, and others were nurses who aided in American base hospitals. Gerard even found a pair of American code breakers that at one point in time had interactions with Bletchley Park. Numerous flags, hats and commemorative jackets were displayed in each room, filling the building with history.

In one particularly dust room, a table displayed a lamp and many photographs. Gerard ran a dry rag over each frame collecting the dirt. He picked each one up to inspect them. The first was of a woman wearing a polka dot dress. She was on the beach with an eastern-style umbrella and a sun hat. “Edna Marie O’Reilly” was written at the bottom of the picture in blue ink. The vintage name made Gerard chuckle. 

There were many other photographs of boats and foreign landscapes and buildings. One frame held a photograph of two young men standing close to each other. The one on the right was grabbing the other man on the left by his head with both hands. He had been humorously kissing him on the cheek playfully, and the man on the left playfully resisted his friend with his arm. The more Gerard looked at the man on the left, the more he saw Frank in the man’s face. 

For a second, be basked in the glory of Frank’s smile. The childish façade that he displayed would always be something that drew Gerard in in the first place. The way he looked in a uniform was something that wouldn’t take Gerard very long to get used to.

A swipe over the glass of the frame would transform Frank’s face and reveal the actual person being kissed. He wished it were real: That the photo was of Frank. He hadn’t a single picture of him in his possession, and that killed him. There was nothing to remind him of what he was fighting for.

XXVII

Dinner in the facility came around six thirty pm. It was a formal event there. All the men changed their shirts and all the women wore the jewels to the table. The entrée of the night was a plate of grilled chicken with asparagus and mashed potatoes. Maybe they weren’t the best in quality, but what they lacked in flavor, they made up for in presentation. Each senior was offered a single glass of red wine if they chose so, and most, who weren’t on any restrictive medications, did.

“Would you like some, ma’am?” Gerard offered to the woman wearing a leopard print shawl. 

“Yes, my son.” She responded in Spanish. 

He brought her glass over to the boxed wine in the corner of the room and filled it a quarter full. 

“Here you are ma’am.” With his left hand, he placed the glass back in front of the woman. Aimlessly, he let his hand linger for a second too long as he took an order from a superior. The woman shrieked in horror at the sight.

“Your ring!” She accused, swatting away his hand, spilling the wine in the motion. “Witchcraft!” Gerard understood her every word.

“What’s going on here?” A supervisor asked.

“You fool!” She yelled. “You think you can outsmart God? Huh? You want to toy with immortality don’t you, you son of a bitch!”

“Mrs. Quintanilla!” The supervisor ran over. “Gerard, go clean yourself up, okay?”

Gerard took a few steps back in horror. He was so stunned that he hadn’t even noticed that the wine had spilled on him instead of the tablecloth. A quick look down revealed a large red stain streaming down his waist, almost reaching the hem of his pant leg.

A fire filled his legs with rage and made him nearly sprint out of the dining room. He did not have a change of scrubs in his locker, he knew that for sure, so with the kitchens free of staff and an excuse to be away, Gerard saw to execute the plan. 

With legs that produced a-less-than-graceful and nearly fawn-like gait, Gerard ran through both floors of the home, closing all the windows and opening the vents wide. The last stop before his final destination was the locker room for his bag, which he strapped to himself tightly. A quick trip down to the boiler room, the breaking of a gas pipe, and the striking of his lighter completed the job. 

He didn’t remember much of what happened after the explosion. All he knew when the EMT woke him was he had been laying in a bed of grass thirty feet away from the building in a plant island in the parking lot out front. 

“Don’t move your neck, sir.” The EMT instructed as she wrapped a Philadelphia collar around his neck. “Just stay still.” She ordered when he resisted her. “You could be injured!”

Not a single bone in his body hurt. For that, he thanked the Saint. 

The team of medics lifted him onto a stretcher and removed his bag and his shoes.

Gerard was bored out of his mind as the crew drove him to the nearest hospital, considering everything that they did and planned on doing was absolutely unnecessary. 

Nearly four hours of scans, tests, and X-rays later, and Gerard finally had his curtained off emergency room bed to himself. Luckily, the EMT’s kept his bag with him in the ambulance, and when they finally released him for changing and signing discharge papers, it had been waiting for him on his bedside table. He figured it would take a while before anyone delivered any paperwork to him, so he reached in the side of his bag for his notebook. With his teeth, he took off the back of the pen cap and held it in his mouth as he wrote. 

 

I am an asshole. I am the reason that at least fifty war veterans are dead. Dead for what? Defending their country? Shit!! What would Frank’s Dad think of that? He was in the Navy. I failed him. I killed their wives. Their nurses and medics. I killed their caretakers. There had to be at least ten of them, I saw their lockers. 

All for Frank. I hope that little fucker is happy when I bring him back— when Sonja brings him back.

What I’m going to do now is something I know I shouldn’t do because it’s against the rules, but I’m willing to try and see how far I can bend them. I’m going to write down a series of questions one day, I hope I’ll have the answer to. Who the fuck is going to answer them, let alone read them? Here we go.

What happens when it’s all over? Will people know that I did all of this? Will I get to keep the ring?

Will Frank know that he’s alive again? Will he know that he ever died? How will the people around us react? Will everything reset? 

Are the people I kill really evil? Evil by whose standards? 

One thing I know for sure is that Mr. Lucky-Number-One-Thousand is sure going to have a quick death. I feel at the end of the first week of June, I’ll be so tired and worn out that I won’t follow Sonja’s plan. I’ll just pop the motherfucker once or twice between his eyes, and I’ll have Frank in my arms in no time. 

I just can’t imagine what it’ll be like when that day comes. I plan on grabbing him at the waist and sucking at the flesh of his lips. I’d like to think I won’t have an extravagant reaction. That I’d keep my cool and savor that moment. I have never been emotional like that, and if I want to remember the sweet little look on his mug, I can’t be a mess.

Hopefully, he’ll be the happiest I’ll ever see him. Knowing Frank, he’ll probably crack a joke about heaven and it’ll shock me at first, but laugh eventually. I know he will. I’d be suspicious if he didn’t.

What is it like in Heaven? Does it change you? I hope it doesn’t, you know? I don’t know what I’d do with myself if he came back to Earth all high and mighty, thumping a Bible and denouncing everything he once stood for. I know his mom would love it. 

Fuck! I’m starting too many sentences with I. That’s okay though, right? This is about me and my thoughts. I sound like a fucking sociopathic first-grader. Just did it again. My writing is shit right now, so eventually, I want my style to become more poetic; Incase I am never seen again and this notebook is all that’s left of me. 

Life “on the road,” as I call it, is so much better than it was at university. I don’t have to wake up at the asscrack of dawn to please some prick ex-lawyer who volunteers his time to teach. So much for poetry. There are no more assignments, or essays, or cramming for tests on things I have no interest in and will never use in my life. 

What happens when I go back? Will I go back? Will people still remember my name? My ambitions? My loan debt? Will my own mother know who I am after this all ends? 

So! In summary, my guilt is covering me in a thick grime and I’m staring to question everything I’ve ever known about Sonja and her policies. This will all be worth it in the end, right?

 

XXVIII

Gerard had seemingly become friends with the police of the various cities he had visited. They’d never know it because of Sonja’s voodoo, but Gerard had been visited by more police officers in hospitals more time than he could count. 

Once he had been discharged, there had been no instructions telling him where to go. Sonja left it opened ended, partially, because she wanted to witness Gerard’s creativity. In his bag, she had given him a good amount of money to spend as he needed: to buy smokes, to pay people off, for blow, or whatever the hell Gerard wanted to do with it. As far as he was concerned, he was invincible, so the only thing stoping him from dancing on the edge of a blade was his pain tolerance. At the end of the day, he rest his head on a hotel pillow, on a park bench, or in a hospital, and he’d wake up with a fully charged battery, and all the funds he needed to complete his job. As long as he did what he was supposed to in the allotted amount of time, he would be fine. 

Only, as he searched the streets for a place to stay for the night, a great cathedral laid its foundation before him, and he couldn’t help but be drawn to it. It had to be at least nine o’clock, and the lights emanating from the windows at the front of the church captured Gerard’s attention like a moth. There had to be someone inside.

He climbed the steps up to the large, rustic doors and pulled them open. A thousand angels stared down at him; their painted faces on the ceiling resembling everything that he had once revered: purity, happiness, life. The ropes that tied those traits to Gerard were being snipped by the scissor-y nails of the devil herself. And he let it all happen.

A single man sat in the front pew with his kneeling bar lowered. A rosary had been wrapped around his palm and he lowered his head in contrition. Gerard followed him in his acts, first dipping his fingers in the bowl of holy water in the back of the chapel. He made the sign of the cross whispering, “In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirt,” as he made each point of the shape. “Amen.” He forgot, trying to recall exactly what his grandmother had taught him to do all those years ago.

He took a seat in the back pew by the exit, kneeling and folding his hands. No words filled his mind as a searing pain filled the skin of his finger. His ring had been glowing red, and it had gotten as hot as a flat iron as it surrounded his finger. He had no choice but to take it off. The ring nearly burned a hole through his pocket as it hung at his kneeling side. 

Vulnerability surrounded him like a fog in that church. Without his ring on, he was just like any other mortal with a name—Gerard—and an identity that mattered to someone. That scared him. Sure, it had only been a few days since his hiring, but it felt like a lifetime ago when a human called him by his correct name and respected him. If the person to do that was going to be a priest, then so be it.

Not long after he took his position in the pew, Gerard stood up and walked over to the confessional. It really was a shot in the dark that there had been anyone in there, but God performed miracles, didn’t he?

The curtain behind him blocked out any stray light that wanted to make its way into the penitent’s side of the box, and to his surprise, a priest opened his window on the other side, flooding a small square with the gentle white light from the other side. The light irritated Gerard’s eyes as he stared back at the priest in another kneel.

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.” It came out an unsure whispered. “It has been,” he had to think for a second, “four years since my last confession.”

The priest had a stone-cold expression on his face. “Go ahead, my son.”

A knot filled in Gerard’s throat. “I’ve allowed myself to engage in a homosexual, Uh, relationship.” It was hard for him to word it that way, as if he was regretful of his love for Frank. As if He truly believed that he was sinful for doing what he did: Find the love of his life. 

“Is that all?” 

“No. I’ve killed people. Many, many, evil people. Rapists, and thieves, and other murderers who God would look down upon.”

The priest snickered. “And you think that you are the one to make that assessment for God? You’re playing a dangerous game, young man. If what you’re telling me is true, then you have committed one of the worst mortal sins. Son, the devil has his hands on you, and you need to be saved. Are you willing to be saved? Are you sorry for what you have done?”

”I want to be sorry, but the only reason I’m doing this is to bring back my dead lover.” It sounded incredulous when he said it aloud. “It’s all for him. And I feel vile for having to do this, but it’s the only way to  
bring him back.”

“Son, it’s not about bringing him back. If he’s gone, he’s gone. God has made his judgements, and there is no bringing him back. I can only offer you salvation if you promise God that you will abandon your  
quest. How many people have you killed?”

Gerard stammered a bit before answering, “Um, maybe sixty, seventy people.”

“Well, in that case, pray the rosary three times, say ten Hail Mary’s, and come to church on Sunday. Understood?”

“Yes, Father.” He pulled from the back of his memory for the closing Act of Contrition prayer, “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell. But most of all because I have offended you, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of your grace, to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life. Amen.”

“Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.”

“For His mercy endures forever." Gerard made the sign of the cross a last time before standing and leaving the box. 

A sort of grace filled his soul; a light helium filled his lungs, threatening to lift him off the floor, but the carbon that filled in his heart was enough to weigh him down. The carbon was all his aspirations to end it all. He could feel the air trickle out his nose as he breathed, walking out the church. It completely diminished as he placed the ring back on after it had cooled down enough. He didn’t hesitate seeing as a dull pain in his ribs had appeared from when he was thrown back in the explosion. Sonja was fast, but not that fast, apparently. 

At that late hour, the streets had been perfect for walking. There hadn’t been abundant amounts of people to witness—or mug—him, and the air was thin enough to gag anyone that wasn’t under the devil’s protection. 

He walked on for a few blocks, turning aimlessly until he came across Spade street. A rusted, old sign hung from the business front: Last Resort. The door of the joint was wide open, and a thick scent of moonshine and cigarellos wafted down the block. Naturally, he followed. 

The bouncer standing inside the door barely paid a second thought to Gerard’s ID, and he took a seat at the bar. During his brief time in the hospital bathroom, he had been able to get a look at his face in the mirror above the sink. It amazed him how little, yet so much the shape of his face had changed. He had still looked as youthful and as boisterous as he had before he had stared, but something in his jaw was different; different enough to make his face match the 1977 listed on his ID. He himself didn’t even question that he was twenty-seven anymore. He definitely felt the part. 

“What can I get you, Bender?” The bartender asked over the moderately loud rock music coming from the jukebox in the corner of the room.

“A Jack and coke.”

 

XXIX

 

Sonja and Teresa sat on the opposite heads of their dining room table. A meal of pan-seared fish and lemon had been prepared for both of them and they ate it deservingly. Today had been a productive day. 

“How was your meeting today?” Sonja asked. Her voice echoed through the gargantuan ceilings. 

Teresa smiled. “It was good, although I’m sure Gerard would have liked to hear what I told him from you.”

Sonja laughed. “It’s alright, he respects you.”

“No!” She dropped her silverware on the table. “He respects you. He gossips with me.”

“That’s good! You have his trust. He thinks he’s your friend.”

“Well, he’s only human!”

Sonja cocked her eyebrow. “Who’d you hear that from?”

“Are you trying to tell me that Gerard is not human?” Her voice showed fury, a state which did not match her feelings of confusion and impatience.

Sonja didn’t answer as she bit off a piece of fish from her fork.

“What is he? An angel? A—Oh! What are they called—a seraph?”

“No. No. No.” She stayed silent.

“Okay then!” Teresa stood up from the table. “Be like that.”

“No, love!” Sonja reached for her. “Please, finish with me.”

She leaned with her hands on on the edge, shifting her jaw in frustration. “This is what’s wrong with us. You told me what you are, and I can live with that, but you tell me nothing else and expect me not to ask questions. I’m not Gerard, I didn’t make that agreement when I gave you my soul! You don’t tell me shit anymore.” 

“I will tell you what he is when the time is right. Until then, I want you to figure things out. Isn’t that why you’ve always loved me? Because of my mystery?”

“I love you, but you’re being cruel.”

Sonja laughed. “Honey, you know who you married, right?”

She sighed. “Of course I do. It’s just, sometimes I question if loving you was the worst thing to ever happen to me.”

“I deserve that.”

“Yeah you did.” She picked up her loaded fork and brought it to her mouth. The thought of food after their conversation disgusted her. She threw the fork at her plate, and Sonja ran over to her. 

She rubbed at Teresa’s shoulders to comfort her. “Let’s go to sleep.” She suggested, lifting her hands as she turned to their bedroom. 

By the time Teresa had gotten up from the table, Sonja had been in the closet pulling out and slipping into a nightdress. She hadn’t wanted to join Sonja in their closet. Seeing Sonja naked was the last thing she needed. 

As she waited for Sonja to come out, she lingered around their bed. A glowing blue envelope with a cross on the back caught her eye. “Sonja!” She called. “There’s a letter for you on the bed.” 

Her muffled voice rang through the wall. “Oh! Can you open it for me?” 

“Sure.” Teresa picked it up, and used her finger to try to rip the top open. The edges had been glued down so tight, and they wouldn’t budge. She tried tearing the side open, but the paper was stronger than Tyvek. “I can’t get it open!” 

“What do you mean you can’t get it open? It’s just paper, right?”

“Yeah, glowing paper with a cross on it.” Teresa tossed it to the bed, giving up. Sonja ran out the closet with rushed feet. 

She grabbed it off the sheet and ripped through the envelope with all the ease in Hell. 

“How did you do that?”

Sonja smiled. “It’s Angel paper. Only beings of a heavenly origin can destroy or penetrate it.”

It took a second for Teresa to remember that Sonja was an Angel—Not only an Angel, and Archangel. Sonja smirked as she read.

“What does it say?” 

“It’s a message from God.” She set in on the bed. 

Teresa picked it up, scanning the foreign characters she inferred were Hebrew. “That says?” Deep down, she knew that Sonja would never tell her, and if filled her with a sharp feeling in her gut that she had always loved: A feeling of danger and mystery and the unknown. 

“He said that he’ll have a message for Gerard soon.” She untucked the bedding and slipped her hairless leg in. “Will you join me?” She cooed.

“Yeah, sure.” Teresa made her way to change. 

By the time Teresa had changed into her sleep attire, Sonja had turned the lights out and covered her arms in the comforter. “Goodnight.” She bid as she did the same. 

“Goodnight.” Sonja responded.

Teresa closed her eyes. 

“Did you want to know something?” Sonja asked. 

Her eyes shot back open. “Absolutely.”

“There are a lot of things people get wrong about me. Some think I’m a man. Some know I’m a woman. In reality, I’m more of a nothing. They think I was cast out of Heaven, but no. I left on my own free will. Some think I hate God. I don’t hate him. He has everything he needs to destroy me, yet he doesn’t, so I’m grateful. Some people think I’m insane, but let me tell you that sinful is not the same as irrational. Some people think I’m incapable of love because I’m evil. What’s evil about me is I torture the ones I love. Some people think my name is Sonja. It’s not. That’s what I tell Gerard and all of the other deals. Do you want to know my real name?”

Teresa nodded in her place. “Yeah.”

“Lucifer.”

“Lucifer.” She repeated. “Luci? Can I call you that?”

She nodded looking Teresa in her eyes, pecking her Goodnight. “I’d be honored if you called me that.”


	5. V

What’s fun about benders when you’ve made a deal with the devil is you truly never know where you’re going to wake up. The same can be said even when the subject of the deal is sober, but at least when you’ve sold your soul, there are no hangovers or alcohol poisoning. 

When Gerard had opened his eyes for the first time his surroundings had been familiar. He knew he was home.

He had only been gone for a year, and not much in his room had changed. It had been more cluttered than usual with all of the wayward crap from the rest of the house ever since the empty room had become the designated junkyard. His sheets had been missing too. That was evident when he had woken up on his mattress covered by no blankets, wearing only a light grey t-shirt, a pair of socks, and a medium-length pair of brief underwear. It reminded him of his high school days when he was too lazy in the morning to take a shower and get dressed, so he wore his outfit for the next day to sleep so he could simply roll out of bed and leave for school. Those were the days. 

A bolt of panic shot through his core when he realized that his bag hadn’t been at his hip. For all he knew, he had gotten drunk and it had been stolen or he had lost it or did whatever drunk Gerard would have done with it. Drunk Gerard is not a smart guy, and everyone knew it.

All of his worries were resolved when he saw his opened bag on the nightstand next to him with his journals and wallet clearly visible inside. 

“Do you think he’s up yet?” He heard a voice ask through the door. Its pitch was high enough to tell Gerard who it belonged to. 

“Who?”

“Your brother, dip shit!”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. Fuck! He’s here. My mom’s gonna kill him.”

In the midst of it all, Gerard hadn’t thought about his mother or his brother or his father at all. By no means was his relationship with his family as rocky as Frank’s relationship with his mom; he actually quite liked his parents, but he had bigger problems than them. 

The door opened with a loud, “Hey!” from a group of young men in unison. They all peaked their heads in through the frame to get a look at Gerard. 

“Hey fuckers!” He recognized. “Ray, Pete, Brendon, what are you doing here?” He hadn’t seen all of them since high school. He adjusted himself on the bed, sitting up to cover his exposed legs. 

“Well,” Ray began, “we all heard about what happened to you up in San Bernardino, and we came to keep Mikey company while your parents went to visit you.”

“You guys came to visit my fifteen-year-old brother?” 

“Yeah.”

He laughed. “Well, it’s,” he checked the alarm clock on his nightstand, “nine o’clock, and your all here, so I’m guessing you all spent the night.”

They all nodded. 

“God!” He stood up and made his way out of his room. The boys stayed behind. “Mikey!” He called. 

Mikey popped his head from around the corner of the room. He waved shyly. 

“Mikey, what the hell happen here last night? It reeks of pot in here!” He ran towards him holding up his hands in confusion. 

The younger brother folded his arms and held his hands under his arms. “Shouldn’t I be asking you what happened?”

“I asked you first.” 

“The guys came over last night and we smoked weed and drank like they did before you left.”

Gerard shook his head. “My guys! My guys came over to our house and partied with you while our parents were out of the house. You are a minor! Do you know how much trouble they could get in if anyone finds out about this? Dad will beat the shit out of them before the cops will ever get their hands on them.”

“You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here?” 

He scoffed, trying to play dumb and come up with a response that would make him seem clueless. “Well, I don’t really know. I went on a bender last night and woke up in my bed. I don’t remember anything else.”

“Shit.” Mikey never cursed when his parents were home. “You went on a one-hundred-mile bender?”

“Yeah.” He leaned up against the wall with his shoulder. 

“Well, you came here last night at about eleven thirty, shit faced. Your pants were falling off, you could barely speak. So, we took you upstairs and you’ve been asleep ever since. Ma and Dad got a call from the university saying that you have been missing for the past week, so they drove up to look for you. What happened?”

The telling of his story was getting repetitive at this point. Gerard would’ve rather blown his own brains out than explain that night one more goddamn time, but this was for Mikey. He owed it to his family. 

“Me and my boyfriend got robbed and shot when we were coming home from the movies. He died.”

“You’re gay?”

He hadn’t been out to anyone at home, and the word “boyfriend” slipped out. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel the sort of apprehension and anxiety he knew he should have felt after announcing something that important to someone that important. 

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s whatever. What movie did you see?”

Gerard wanted to smile. “Dawn of the Dead.” He knew Mikey would be jealous.

“Aw, cool! I wanted to see that with Ma, but she said it was too gory. That’s what I miss now that you’re gone. There’s no one to take me to the horror flicks anymore.”

He could feel Mikey about to ask his next question. 

“Are you back for good now?”

Gerard shook his head. “No. I don’t think I am.”

“So, you’re just going to give up on this lawyer shit?”

“Yeah. For now.” That question lodged an existential crisis into Gerard’s mind. He still didn’t know what he was going to do when the deal was over. He question everything he had known about his morals and everything that he stood for. 

“I’ll let you tell Mom.” Mikey began walking away. 

All Gerard needed in that moment was conformation. “Hey, wait.”

Mikey turned around, bobbing his head queuing Gerard to speak.

“Do you remember those little comic books we used to make.”

He nodded. 

“I think I want to do that.”

The grin on Mikey’s face was bigger than Gerard had ever seen. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I need your help on something, though.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“I’m working on this one book—“

“Oh! What’s it called?”

Gerard said the first thing that popped in his head. “Uh— Hip, Hip... Revenge? I don’t know. It’s a working title.”

Mikey pulled a smirk. “‘Kay, I dig it.”

“It’s about this who dude dies, and he makes a deal with the devil to get back to his lover back, and the devil tells him to bring him the souls of a thousand evil men. I’m having trouble picturing the protagonist’s attitude towards the whole situation.”

“Ah. I see. How much does the man love his dead lover on a scale of one to ten?”

“A million.”

“It sounds like he’d do anything to be back with her, and rightfully so, I guess. Make the main dude determined. Make him ravenous for revenge, like there would be nothing in his way stopping him from reuniting with his lover. That would make the best story. Make him absolutely insane. At least, that’s how I imagine I’d feel in that situation.”

Gerard smiled down at him. “Thanks, Mike. And uh, don’t tell Mom and Dad I was here.”

“No problem. Fax me a copy of it when the first issues’s all drawn up.” He backed off into his room, closing his door. 

XXX

“D’you want a bowl of cereal?” Ray offered as he pulled out the box of plain Cheerios from the cabinet. 

Gerard searched for hunger but couldn’t find it. “Nah.” He shook his head and sat at the table. 

Brendon took the seat next to him. “Dude, you will never guess who’s upstairs in your parents’ room.”

Gerard had no idea who it could have been. He hoped it was a good friend of his, but knowing that Pete was around, it was probably some eccentric girl he picked up at a rock club. 

“Who is it?” He asked popping his fingers instinctively.

“Go see.”

He stood from the kitchen table and began an eager walk to the staircase. His pair of rapid feet nearly broke off at the ankles, he was climbing the steps that fast. With his weary hand, he turned the door knob and was met with a room that was a shade lighter than pitch black.

There had been just enough light for Gerard to see the shape of his parents’ old bed frame and the hallway to their master bathroom. Under the coziness of the comforter, he could see the outline of a body. The only distinguishing feature on it was a wild mop of black hair that filled the room with the aroma of cigarette smoke and sweat. His parents would love to come home to that.

He slapped the light-switch on with an open palm and took a bounding step into the room. The head popped up, and a sleep-ridden voice groaned out a helpless sounding, “Uh?”

The pair of eyes that met Gerard’s gaze were one that he’d never forget. They belonged to his first love. Bert McCracken.

“Holy shit.” They both murmured in unison, Bert turning himself over and throwing the blankets off himself, catching his balance and beginning to run toward Gerard with outstretched arms. 

Gerard met him with his own arms extended to their full wingspan. Bert’s flannel pajama pants brushed up with the bare skin of Gerard’s legs as they embraced, sending the hairs on his body to stand on end. The sensation of Bert’s toes overlapping his own brought him back to the memories of their middle school fling. 

“Gerard? Is this real?” He asked. His voice had deepened considerably since the last time Gerard had seen him. 

“Yeah. I think so.” He giggled into Bert’s hair. Both of their rib cages shook against each other from the laughter, and the physicality of it was so pure, so primal; as it brought up not only the recollections of times spent together, but also the feelings from the past. 

XXXI

Bert and Gerard’s love affair of 1999 happened in secret. Not one other member of their friend group knew about their feelings for each other or what became of them. 

They had been a thing since the summer following fifth grade promotion. Every child who stepped onto the stage and shook the superintendent’s hand as they were handed their certificates had some level of fear regarding middle school—even if they didn’t want to admit it. For some, it was a matter of being separated from their friends or being reunited with their older siblings that gave them the feeling of butterflies trapped in their cores. For Gerard, what scared him was the change he knew would happen. None left middle school the same as they had entered. He had heard of a girl killing herself at the school he was going to go to. It made him worry that he might be driven to do the same. 

It had been an unsuspecting Thursday when the two had first met. Gerard had picked up the latest issue of the X-men on new-comic-Wednesday the day before without Mikey, who had been at a friend’s house. When he had found out, he begged Gerard to take him the next day to make up for breaking their mid-week tradition.

So, there the brothers stood at the register of the comic shop as Mikey slipped the cashier a copy of 100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello. Ten-year-olds weren’t supposed to like pulp fiction, or for that matter, read it. 

Al, the owner of the shop was in cahoots with Gerard. It seemed as if he could see past the teenage angst for all of the good in him. He had also heard his mom talking about how spectacular his grades were the times she had brought him, so he saw no harm in letting the straight-A-student read a few obscene graphic novels or letting him buy them for his brother. 

“$6.43.” He said as he chewed on the end of a toothpick. He handed the books back to the boys in a plastic bag and held out his hand for Gerard’s cash. 

“Keep the change.” Gerard handed the bag to Mikey and waved Al goodbye. 

The old man leaned against the filing cabinet that organized all of the books the shop’s regulars had placed on hold, behind the counter. A quick turn of his hand resembled a wave, and he fixed his hat toward the back of his head.

It was the tiny chime of the bell above the door that made all three of their heads turn. Bert had been standing in front of the door with a smug grin on his face. Al sighed and folded his arms in the way that made his guayabera wrinkle and his wife’s iron work over-time. 

As Bert made his way to the back of the shop, Al made eye contact with Gerard. He gestured with his eyes to follow, and Gerard caught his que. 

“Go sit outside and read your book.” He ordered Mikey. Mikey obliged. “I’ll be right out. Don’t talk to strangers!” He yelled just before Mikey exited the store.

“This kid is a character.” Al whispered as Gerard went to follow.

“I’ll bet.” He placed his hands in the pockets of his hoodie as he left the counter. 

Over the top edges of the rows of books, he scanned for a person, and in the back right of the row of shelves, he saw the top of a head of long black hair with streaks of red. There had been something familiar about his hair to Gerard, making him feel as if he had gone to school with the kid. He had to be around his age.

Gerard never let Mikey in the back, right row of shelves. That was where the shop organized all its erotic manga.

He tried to look as natural as possible to not scare Bert away as he approached. Al had let Gerard on to many of his weirder usuals, so he had kind of become an expert at what some people might call stalking. 

After he turned the corner and entered the back row, he took a step back and pretended to admire the covers of the books. Animated breasts and fallacies etched an unforgettably horrid image into his brain that would take at least fifty Hail Marys to forget. None of the titles were in English, but the people who bought these books didn’t necessarily plan on reading them, apparently. 

Bert held a book with white and purple cosmic designs and a brown-haired school girl in her uniform with her cleavage drawn inhumanly large. Gerard watched as he flipped through a few pages, tracing the drawn lines of the images like a child learning how to read.

A soft clearing of the throat from Gerard was enough to break him of his concentration. He looked up at him, closing the book and hiding it behind his back.

“Are you causing Al any trouble?” 

“What if I was?” He said with a grin that showed he wasn’t expecting a challenge.

“You’d be an asshole.”

Bert shrugged. “Guess I would.” He resumed reading his book. 

Gerard scrunched his face in frustration and confusion. “How the hell do you even buy these books. You have to be eighteen, don’t you?”

Bert closed the book and tucked it under his arm as he reached for his wallet in his back pocket. With a smooth flick, he unfolded the Roy and showed Gerard his fake ID through the plastic sleeve. On the opposite sleeve, his student ID from Warworm Middle School sat proudly displayed as well.

Gerard pointed to the student ID which displayed Bert’s age to be the same as his own. “School hasn’t even started yet. How’d you get this?” He asked.

“I’m doing summer school.” Bert said as he put his wallet back in his baggy, cargo-shorts pocket. 

“For what? How do you fail a class you haven’t even taken yet?”

“To get ahead, dick. Some people here have goals. I’m going to be a marine biologist.”

“Lawyer, and maybe one day the president. Try me, bitch.” There was something exhilarating about talking to someone his age this way, so playfully aggressive yet brutally honest as soon as he had met him that set Bert apart. 

Bert held his hands up in surrender. “You win.” They both smiled. “Hey, did you want to leave this place and grab something to eat, smoke some cigarettes?”

Don’t get him wrong, Gerard wanted to go. “Right now? I’ve got my little brother waiting outside for me. He’s probably freaking the fuck out.”

“Holy shit! You left your brother sitting outside in this weather?”

“Fuck!” Gerard grabbed at his hair. “I didn’t even think about that.” He darted to the front, and Bert followed. Al shot the two a disapproving glare as they left his store. 

XXXII

The only thing that broke Gerard from his memory was the feeling of Bert’s tongue sliding into his own mouth. It had all been so surreal, how much he had improved since their first kiss. It was powerful enough to make him forget about Frank. 

“How’s life, college boy?” Bert asked as he wrapped his hands around Gerard’s neck and put his weight on one leg. 

Gerard laughed. “Pretty shitty.”

“So, nothing’s changed?” The both chuckled. “What are you doing here?”

“This is my family house. What are you doing here?”

“Nothing much. Just here for the weed, and now that it’s gone, I have no clue what I’m doing here.” A look of glee shot its way onto Bert’s face. “You know what we should do today?”

“What?” Reaching behind, he grabbed Bert’s hands in his own and brought them before his chest.

“We should go ride the ferry to Coronado.”

A nervous energy spiked in his stomach that coated his insides with excitement. “The Ferry?”

“Yeah.”

“God, the last time I went to Coronado was—” 

“I know.”

“Don’t you think it would be a perfect time to go back, now that you’re in town.”

He laughed. “Perfect isn’t exactly the word I’d use but, I guess it’s good enough.”

“Get ready,” He dropped Gerard’s hands,“you big goof!”

Gerard ran down the hall, stopping at the locked door on the right. “Mikey!” He knocked, not caring what he was disrupting. “Mikey, open the door.”

A sluggish groan pushed its way through the air, followed by at the sound of a pair of clumsy feet hitting the floor. “What!?” Mikey asked after he had opened the door just enough for Gerard to see his face.

“I’m going to Plutocrat Island. Do you have anything nice I can wear?” Mikey was the You her of the two brothers, but that kid sure was tall.

Mikey dropped the door handle. “Coronado? What the hell are you going to do there?”

“I’m going with Bert.”

“Like on a date?”

He scoffed. “For future reference, just because I like men, doesn’t mean I like all men. But yes.”

Mikey smiled. “Come in.” 

As they stood in front of Mikey’s opened wardrobe, Gerard searched for something that would protect him from the oceanic winds. He chose a pair of straight jeans, a black t-shirt, and a black pleather jacket. To top it all off, he added a striped scarf to his look and tapped a few dabs of Old Spice around his neck and jawline. 

XXXIII

The rest of the gang booed when they told them their plans. They yelled at Bert for stealing their best friend from them, but that didn’t stop them from getting in Bert’s car and driving to Long Beach.

The first time they had done this, Gerard laughed at the thought that he was in the corner of the country. Nowadays, he longed for small revelations like that, but those were a thing only for innocent adolescents.

When he had pointed it out the first time around, Bert let out a sputtering laugh. “I guess we are.” 

That was what Gerard loved about Bert. He was goal oriented, but he could live in the moment and enjoy himself. He could play along with jokes, and still be an intellectual. He could be a smartass, but he could also be so undeniably sweet to everyone.

The air was the perfect temperature—not too hot, not too cold—as it skimmed their cheeks. A brilliant summer sun hit the shore and made the water around them glisten. They stood at the bow of the ship, sharing each side of the point and leaning against the barrier as they reached out for the island. 

“So, what’s so special about this place anyway?” Gerard asked. “My family’s always talking shit about the rich people and how expensive it is. You know that you have to pay a toll to cross over the bridge?”

“Yeah. That’s why we’re taking the Ferry.” 

“We had to pay for tickets, you know.” 

“Yup. Oh well.” Bert folded his hands and shifted his stance. “Have you ever been to the city?” 

“No.” Coronado, or even Downtown San Diego weren’t places that teenagers could hang around without their parents unless they were from there.

“Well, you see that boat over there?” He pointed to the white boat with an orange inflatable around its edge. In large black letters, “Coast Guard,” was written on the steering compartment. 

“Yeah. What are they for?”

“I’m pretty sure they work with the Navy—there’s a Navy base on the island—and they watch for suicide jumpers ‘cuz of the bridge.”

“Damn!” Gerard tucked his hair behind his ear. “That’s fucking dark. If they’re out, does that mean there’s a body?”

“No, no, no. They’re always patrolling the water, just in case.”

“Oh. That’s awful.”

“That’s why I hate taking the bridge.” 

“I see.”

As they stepped off the ferry, a shake resonated in Gerard’s legs that told him that he didn’t belong. He had seen a few women sneering at his lack of colorful clothes and Bert’s aimless ensemble. An unworthy expression showed on Gerard’s face at the sight of all the old-timey architecture that exuded a sort of swagger that didn’t match his own energy. 

“What are we doing here?” His voice was as unsteady as his legs.

Bert grabbed his shoulders. “We are going to have a good time.” The peeling skin of his lips graced the thin flesh just above Gerard’s eyebrow. “Let’s go. Do you see that building with the orange roof?” He pointed as they began walking down the street. 

“Yeah. The one with the dome?”

“Yup. That’s the Hotel Dell. They say it’s haunted. I know you like those ghost stories. I kinda like ‘em too.”

“No way! Can we go inside?” 

“I mean, we could, but it costs three dollars per minute of air you inhale in there.”

“Ah, I see.”

Bert’s eye’s opened wider than Gerard had ever seen. “Fuck! I know where we have to go.” He grabbed Gerard’s arm and dragged him across the road. They ran across the city, crossing roads with signs prohibiting skateboards, scooters, and bikes; ignoring stoplights; and nearly getting runover. 

Along the way to wherever Bert had been taking him, Gerard had noticed many large signs by the residential area reminding the inhabits to “Keep the noise down!” Coronado was a city of signs, warnings, and passive aggression.

They reached a shopping center at the end of the long strip mall. It was full of small “I heart SD,” stores and other tourist attractions. Gerard had lived in Chula Vista his whole life, but there, he might as well have been a tourist. 

Bert planted his feet in front of a box painted to look like a rainforest. Gerard rested his hand on top as Bert ran around and sat at the bench behind the box. The view of all the ships in the harbor was mesmerizing: Navy ships with grey and blue paint jobs, a white ship with a red cross, large cranes that operated right over the water. Gerard wondered if the people that worked in those stores and walked those streets noticed how beautiful the sea-scape was.

A humming vibration tickled the tips of Gerard’s fingers. He peered his head over the other side of the box. There were keys and Bert had begun playing them melodically.

“It’s a piano?” Gerard smiled.

“Yeah,” Bert’s voice was barely audible over the sound of the music he was making. “read the sign on the front.”

Another sign.“Sit for a spell and play a tune.” 

“Do you play?” Bert asked. 

“No.” He rested his hand on his face and watched Bert’s wayward hands as they licked the keys. 

A crowd of people from the stores and the street gathered around the two as he continued his mini-concerto. A roar of applause came when he finished, and Gerard stepped out of the way to allow everyone to see him bow. 

“Encore!” An old woman called.

“No, sorry. I’ve got plans!” Bert announced as he jumped out from, behind the piano and grabbed Gerard by the hand again. 

Gerard had never been handled like that by anybody, and if anybody else had done that to him, he might never speak to them again. But Bert was filled with a great zeal for showing Gerard around, and he didn’t mind.

Once they had traveled far enough away from the shopping center, Bert slowed down his pace, and Gerard followed.

“You know, you’re like, wicked good a playing the piano.” He complimented. 

“No, I’m not.”

“Yeah. You are. That was amazing back there.”

“Well, it’s the only song I know how to play. I come here every once in a while, and I play the same song over and over again. It’s actually quite pathetic.”

“You make people happy with your playing.”

Bert rubbed at his eyes. “Hundreds of people make other people happy with their playing.”

“You make me happy.”

That made him grin another revelation grin. “Do you tell your friends about this?”

“About us?”

“Yeah. Us.”

“I wish I had friends to tell. I’ve got my brother and my mom. Neither of them ask too many questions about what I do with my friends.” 

“Oh. Well, I tell my friends from summer school about you. They say I don’t shut up about you. God, am I being weird? Tell me if I am. I’ll stop.”

“No. You’re fine. Keep going.” He hadn’t even realized that Bert had lead him to the beach. They stepped onto the shore, and took a seat before a large, red hibiscus bush. 

“Do you ever think about having a girlfriend?” 

Gerard remembered one of the times he had hung out with Bert. He was wearing a black shirt with the word “FAG,” written in metallic blue paint. He figured that in complimenting him for it, he opened up an avenue that he didn’t mean to open, but he didn’t exactly regret it. 

He would be honest. “No. Never.”

“Boyfriend?”

Gerard nodded. “All the time.”

“Do you ever think about me being your boyfriend?”

“A bit. Do you ever think about me being your boyfriend?”

“A lot.”

He didn’t know what to do with himself but rub at the dirty toes of his shoes. “Interesting.” He drew out.

Bert turned himself around, so his back was to all of the people and their families playing in the water. “Look at me.” He ordered. A quiver settled in Gerard’s cheeks, making Bert question what he was about to say. “Do it if it feels right.”

Something inside of him screamed in joy. It didn’t feel real to him. How on earth could someone possibly like him? No one even spoke to him at school. The teachers had to force people to let him work with them for group projects. As unbelievable as it was, it made him feel special. So, he leaned forward slightly, and closed his eyes as he kissed Bert. 

Bert took it all in for the duration of the kiss. It was Gerard who finally broke away with his pupils dilated and his de-virginized lips.

“Are you okay?” He asked Gerard.

“Did that really just happen?”

“Yeah.” The slight breeze chilled the saliva that still coated his lips.

“Good.”

XXXIV 

For the second time ever, Gerard rode the ferry, and Bert sat in the seat across from him. The first time, he had sat next to him, and seeing as they had kissed earlier, he thought he would sit next to him again. He had been thinking all morning about that kiss. They hadn’t seen each other in five years and the first thing they did was kiss.

It had seemed so long since Bert moved causing them to break up. “Are you a marine biologist yet?” Gerard joked.

Bert chuckled with embarrassed cheeks. “No, actually. After my dad died, and I moved away, my mom got married to this asshole, and he gambled away my college fund.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. So, I kinda had to put school on the back burner, ya know? But you have no excuse. You made it out. How come you’re not the president yet?”

There the story would come again. “My boyfriend slash roommate got killed, so I’ve decided to take an indefinite vacation from school. I didn’t tell anyone about it, so they all think I’m missing, when I’ve really been on a bender.”

Bert cackled. “Well, it’s not showing.”

“Oh, shut up, you big flirt.”

“I’m the flirt? You dated your roommate!”

“You’re right.” 

“Do you still read comics?” Bert looked excited. 

“I don’t have time to read anymore, but I got super into horror flicks.”

“Oh. Interesting. How come you won’t tell your parents you’re here?”

“I don’t want to ruin this. I’m just so detached from reality right now, I needed to come home and just hang out with my brother in my hometown.”

Bert felt like an asshole. “Aw! Well you should have told me. I would have backed off. Now, I really feel like I’ve stolen you from everyone.”

Gerard shook his head. “No. I want to be here with you. Mikey saw me and went back into his room.”

“We had a good year together.”

“Yeah. We did.”

“The best time of my life I’d say.”

XXXV

“Do you remember this piano?” Bert asked as he sat down at the same bench from before. It had been weather worn, and one of the legs had become loose. As he set his weight on it, the wood creaked loudly. The designs on the piano had faded and some of the paint had even chipped. He tapped a single note on the bass end of the piano, and the sound it made was much deeper and more reverberated than either of them remembered it to be.

“Yeah. It’s seen better days though.”

“No shit.” There was something about Bert that had changed. Not that he was a bad person now, he just seemed to care less. Less like he was trying to put up an act of being an angel, more like he had been through some shit. To Gerard, he even seemed darker than his usual self. In that respect, he could relate. 

He began playing scales on the piano, and Gerard flopped himself over the edge of the piano just as he had all those years ago, except this time, he was a bit more tired. 

Bert finally began playing a song with his out-of-practice hands and Gerard’s ears perked. It had been the same song he had heard in his dream the night before. The same manic, finger-slamming, psychotic inducing, piano breaking ballad that the man had played in the restaurant. 

“Play that one you did last time.” Gerard requested. He didn’t have to yell as loud.

Bert laughed and stopped playing. “That was it.”

His stomach dropped. Had it really been the same song? Did he remember it in his dream, or had Sonja altered reality?

“No fucking way!” 

“Yes, fucking way. Why?” 

“I heard it in a dream last night and—where did you learn it?”

“I don’t know. It was in one of my dad’s old Romanian piano books. I think it was called, ‘Blestemul celor doi iubiți,’ or ’The Curse of Two Lovers’.”

“Well isn’t that ironic?”

“Huh?” He continued playing. 

“Nothing.” Just behind Bert, Gerard watched the people in the street. All of the people had been laughing and talking amongst themselves as they kept moving. What caught Gerard’s eye was the single person who had been standing still. It had been Frank waving back at him. He smiled and gestured towards his cross-body bag that resembled the snake skin one he had left at home. He left without waiting for Gerard’s reaction.

“Dammit!” Gerard yelled, banging on the piano. He had forgotten all about the book and his bag and the deal. 

“What?” 

“Is this all we were going to do here today?”

“Pretty much. Why?”

“Can we go home? I forgot to take my medication, and I think I’m seeing things.”

Bert stood from the bench and lowered the cover over the keys. “Yeah. If you need to.” 

XXXVI

“They’re back!” Pete exclaimed as the front door of the house opened and revealed the two runaways. 

Mikey turned his head. “Already?”

Gerard ran upstairs to his room as Bert took the question. “Yeah. He forgot his meds, or whatever.” Mikey shot him a sympathetic look.

The second Gerard reached his room, he grabbed for his bag. He spilled everything out into his bed and scrambled through the pile of things he had accumulated. The frantic slip of his hand nearly caused him to get a paper cut as he snatched the book. A quick flip opened the book to the correct page and he scanned for names, times, and locations.

“William Corgan  
James Iha  
Robert Mccracken  
Raymond Toro  
Brendon Urie  
Peter Wentz  
D’arcy Wretzky.

Stay for the party. Lace the drugs.”

As he read each name, he tightened his painful grip on his hair. “No!” He shrieked. “Aw, fuck, No!” An ear-splitting cry flowed from his throat like water from a broken dam. 

Five pairs of feet came running towards his room and he covered his book with his empty bag. Bert was the first person through the door. 

“What’s wrong?” His voice cracked from worry.

Gerard shook his head as he saw the faces of everyone else behind Bert. “Nothing.” He shook his head. “I forgot my medication in San Bernardino.”

“Oh,” Bert started, “That’s Alright. We can take you to the pharmacy in the morning.”

“Okay.” He wiped a tear from his cheek. 

“Can you wait that long?”

“Yeah.” 

“Corgan and his friends are coming over in a little. They might have something to hold you over until then.” Bert said as he exited the room, pushing everyone else out as well. 

Despite needing to kill all of his childhood friends, Gerard was grateful for one thing: Mikey was not on the list. 

Under his journal, he saw the lip of a closed plastic bag. He pulled it out and examined it up close. It looked too grainy to be cocaine, so to satisfy his curiosity, Gerard had opened the bag. A mild smell of almonds filled his nostrils, triggering a vivid memory from his high school chemistry class.

“CN belongs to the cyano group in which a carbon atom is triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. The many different forms of this compound form what you may know as cyanide: a deadly poison that smells of bitter almonds, and can kill a human within minutes if a great enough dose is given.” He could still hear Mrs. Allred drilling the formulae in his head. 

Cyanide. That was a rough death, and Gerard knew that. It could start as a headache, and not being able to catch your breath, or vomiting. It would end with a heart attack that you wouldn’t be able to come back from. 

And to think: He would be choosing that death for his best friends. For Ray and Brendon and Billy! For Bert. It made him absolutely sick to imagine killing Ray; the friend who was always looking out for everyone else. And Brendon; the kid that taught him to be himself. And Bert; his first love.

He promised himself that as long as they were his friends, he wouldn’t watch them die. He couldn’t.

XXXVII

Billy Corgan and the pumpkin smashers,—as Brendon called them, after they got drunk on Halloween and decimated all the neighborhood jack o lanterns— arrived at a quarter until nine with a honking car horn and a backpack full of weed. 

Ray insisted that they go outside once they heard the honking through the walls of the house. He didn’t want their night to end with a noise complaint before it had even started. 

“Aw, Billy!” Ray yelled. “You never said you got a new car!” He ran up to the vehicle to run his hand over the paint of the used Buick LeSabre. 

“I wanted to surprise you guys.” Billy stepped back to put his arm around D’arcy after she had exited the car. James came around to the front to stand with them.

Ray laughed. “I think we have you beat.”

Gerard came out front of the house to see what all the commotion was about. 

“Gerry! That can’t be you!” Billy yelled as he spotted him from behind Ray. 

“Billy!” He went for a bear hug. “Man, it’s been forever since I’ve seen you. I like the car.”

“Thanks. Dee,” he turned to D’arcy and pointed to Gerard. “this boy is my son. I love him so much. When I met him, he was this itty-bitty freshman, but I turned that all around. I gave him his good taste in music and taught him how to talk to girls.” Mikey and Bert both cackled.

Gerard laughed with the rest of the group observing their bond. “Where’d you get the car?”

“This story’s unbelievable. Tell ‘em James.”

James cleared his throat. “So, we were walking downtown, and there she is parked on the block with a sign that read, ‘$4200. Apartment 27. Acquire within.’ So, Billy sees that and—you know Billy, he tries to barter his way out of everything. So, he makes us all go up to apartment 27 of the complex it was parked in front of, and this little old lady opens the door. I swear, she couldn’t have been more than 4’10. And Billy goes, I’d like to buy your car. And she says okay. So, we’re all sitting down in this old woman’s house waiting for her to fill out some paperwork and stuff, and then it gets time for Billy to pay the lady. She had told us that she had lost her glasses and couldn’t see a thing when they had begun filling out papers, so when it comes time for Bill to pay, this asshole pulls out his wallet and gives the lady a fat stack of ones, fives, and twenties, counting them out to her aloud and placing them in her hand as if they were hundreds. How much did you end up paying for it, anyway?”

“Like 89 bucks.”

“Shit!” 

Gerard smirked. “Where’d you even get that many bills from? Sounds like you were on your way to a strip club.” 

“I save all my tips from work.” 

“Ah, I see.” 

“That’s fucked, Billy.” Ray commented. 

“Hey, what’s done is done.” He held his hands up defensively. Billy rubbed his arms. “It’s fucking nippy out here. I’m going outside.” Everyone else followed him. James made sure to bring in their backpack.

All of Gerard’s friends took their seats on the couch and in stray chairs they had pulled from the kitchen table. There was no way all of them could fit on the sofa even if they sat on top of each other. 

“Gerard!” D’arcy called, noticing that he been walking up the stairs as they settled into their seats, “Come sit down with us. Let’s catch up.” 

He smiled and waved her off. “I’ll be back in a second. I just gotta take a piss real quick.” He continued his way up the steps. 

She laughed. “Alright. Bring us some cups on your way back.” 

He gave a weak thumbs up just before he reached the top. He made a bee-line for Mikey’s room, not even hesitating to knock as he let himself into the room, closing the door behind him.

“You want to wear matching—hey!” Mikey covered the microphone of the landline he had been talking on. “What are you doing?” He was beyond annoyed.

Gerard brought his finger to his mouth, telling Mikey to be quiet.

“Hold on. Alicia, can I call you back? Okay, can’t wait. Love you. Bye.” Mikey hung up the phone. “What?”

Gerard sat on the edge of Mikey’s bed, and Mikey tucked his legs to make room for him. 

“Mikey, you know how much you mean to me, right.”

He nodded, not catching his drift.

“I was pretty young when you were born, but even then, I swore to mom that I would protect you. I wanted to be like the super heroes in those Saturday morning cartoons.”

Mikey chuckled and pulled down the sleeves of his sweater at the realization that what Gerard was about to say was potentially serious.

“That’s why I need you to stay in your room tonight. Do you understand?”

Mikey nodded. 

“I don’t care what you hear tonight. You don’t leave this room until the sun is in the sky. And don’t freak out when you wake up and I’m not here. You probably won’t be seeing or hearing much of me for a while.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. My friends have drugs and alcohol here, and if you get involved both of you will be in trouble. Don’t do anything that might make God put you in the Devil’s list.”

“God?” He laughed.

“Yeah. God. If anything bad happens tonight, or in the morning, call the police! You will be safe if you just tell them everything you know. Mom will be mad, but I know she’ll be glad that you’re save. I’ll be glad.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“I’m scaring me. Now, do I have your word?” Gerard stood over his brother.

“Yeah. Sure.”

Gerard leaned over and grabbed Mikey’s head gently. He planted a kiss on his forehead and turned for the door.

“Hey.” Mikey stopped him. “Are you okay?”

Gerard shook his head. “I miss him so much. He and you are the only people keeping me going.”

“God! I’m so sorry. Do you want to talk about him?” Sure, Gerard hadn’t been that much older than him, but Gerard had made it out. He had lived in a place other than their childhood home. Mikey couldn’t say the same. He wanted to hear about real love and what it feels like. How to recognize the true feeling of being inseparable from someone. He wanted to know if he had that with Alicia. 

“Do you want me to talk about him?”

He shrugged, queuing Gerard to sit back down. “You’ve met Frank before. He wasn’t exactly a gentleman, and that didn’t matter to me. That was never the problem. I don’t really know how emotionally similar you and I are, but he never fixed my problems, he just put me that much closer to helping me fix them myself. I loved having someone to touch and to kiss. He made me determined and ravenous to accomplish my goals. That’s what I loved most about him. He was right by my side the entire journey. I wish I would have died out there with him.”

“Don’t say that!” Mikey scolded.

“It’s true. My life would be a helluva lot easier if I was hanging out with the big man in the sky right now.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

Gerard mustered a lie. “I can’t verbalize it. It hurts too much.” The air was silent between them for a second. “Just keep your promises, and everything will be fine. Got it?” He stood a last time and held the handle of the door in his hand. 

“Okay, just don’t do anything stupid.” Mikey warned. 

He let out a deep laugh. “It’s a bit late for that.” He closed the door behind himself and went for the stairs.

Mikey couldn’t help himself from breaking down the second he heard the lock on the door tick. It sparked an intensified feeling of anger and sadness and pity for Gerard to see and hear him talk like that. Needless to say, he didn’t plan on calling Alicia back.

“Jesus, Gerard! You must have took the mother of all craps upstairs!” Billy joked. Gerard reluctantly chuckled as he headed for the kitchen to grab everyone cups. 

“Fuck the cups.” D’arcy yelled as she heard the cabinets open. “You took too long up there. Come sit down. There’s a nice rum and coke waiting for you!” 

Gerard played along. He had to. 

He took the red solo cup in his hand and a chain of thoughts formed in his brain. 

In France, he had been roofied. The drugs had worked in his system. The ring brought him back from his stooper just in time to take out his attacker. The day before, in Florida, he had gotten drunk, and woke up without a hangover. It was Sonja that cured him of that, not the ring or the Saint. What would happen if he were to get drunk tonight? Sonja would probably repair him by morning, right? What if he were to take the cyanide? Would the Saint save him before his heart begins to fail? It all baffled him. 

“So, let’s get back to this!” Brendon flailed a drunk hand in the air to silence everyone else. “You’re telling me you’d never experiment with a guy, like ever?”

Billy shook his head violently. “Hell no! Hats off to you if you want to, but that is an exit only for me. Plus, I’ve got D’arcy.” 

“Why the hell not? Guys are fuckin’ pieces of work!” He took another swill of his 12 oz old fashioned.

“Sorry, Bren. I’m comfortable with my sexuality.” He crossed his legs with a shrug.

Brendon flamboyantly scoffed. “Gerry!” He called, breaking Gerard from his deep thoughts. “Would you ever fuck a guy?”

What did it matter now? “Yeah!” He proclaimed. “I absolutely would. In fact, I’d only ever fuck guys. I had a roommate in college, and do you know what I did to him? I fucked him.”

Bert reached out to Gerard from his seat and slapped his arm. “Stop.” He mouthed. 

Gerard couldn’t help but clench his jaw in attempts to stifle tears he knew would come as an awkward silence cursed the room.

Brendon stood with his arms wide open for a hug. “Well, welcome to the team!” He greeted as he walked toward him.

He followed him and crashed into his fit chest with a soft grunt. “I’m going to miss you so much, brother.” He kissed the flesh of his neck cordially. His skin had been so warm from all the alcohol he had been drinking. 

Brendon kissed him back sloppy. “Where am I going?” Brendon laughed. He felt the coldness of Brendon’s pinkie ring when he placed his hand on the side of his face. 

“Alright! Enough.” Pete shouted. “If I’m going to have to watch you two make out, I’m going to need a blunt.”

“Yeah.” James agreed. “Can one of you roll us some?”

Brendon shook his head. “I can’t even walk straight right now.” His voice turned hyper-feminine and even more drunk-sounding than he already was. “I’m like, so totally fucked up as it is. What makes you think I can roll a blunt?” He sat down as the group laughed at his valley girl impression. 

“I got it.” Gerard did as he leaned over and reached for the backpack on the coffee table below. 

“Thanks! You’re a lifesaver!” James called as Gerard made his way to the kitchen counter.

Gerard himself had never been much of a stoner, but he assumed that he would know how to do everything when the time came. He opened the small pocket of the blue Jansport and found a small bag of weed nuggets. Just behind it was a box of rolling paper and the keys to Billy’s car. He took them and stuffed them in the front pocket of his pants.

He opened the bag of kush and was met with the familiar smell that reminded him of his friend’s bedrooms and unwashed clothes after a night at a party. 

After reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out the smaller bag of cyanide and sprinkled the entire contents onto the weed. He shook it around after resealing the bag to ensure that each leaf got coated. 

With no proper grinder, he took the weed in his hands and broke it down into smaller pieces and placed the crumbles in a row on a rolling paper. He rolled it around, stuck down the adhesive. and twisted the ends off. After he had used all of the weed, he was left with five thick, lethal weapons that he would serve to his friends. 

He looked down at his hands and saw the small grains of poison in the grooves of his fingerprints like salt. Small bits of pot had lodged under his finger nails as well, and he felt an irresistible urge to test the Saint.

Without a moment to second guess himself, he stuck his finger in his mouth, making sure to touch the particles to his tongue. No bitter or salty taste infected his tastebuds like he thought. Nothing happened in-fact, which helped distract himself. 

On the way back with the blunts in one hand and the backpack held under his arm, Gerard pulled out a lighter from the same backpack pocket and set the bag back on the table. He passed out the joints to everyone, and he gave Billy the lighter. 

They began sharing and lighting up their joints, and Gerard felt nothing. He didn’t allow himself to. If he wanted to follow through with his original plan, he needed to get out of that house. 

“I’m not really feeling this rum and coke. I’m gonna go walk to the gas station and get a Becker Bomb.” He announced as he stood and made his way for the door. 

“Aw, cool.” Ray stopped him. “Isn’t that like the caffeinated beer? Can you get me one too?”

“Sure. I’ll be right back.” He grabbed his coat off the kitchen table and left.

Only, he didn’t walk his way to the gas station. He pulled out Billy’s keys and started the car before anyone could come and follow him.

With nowhere to go, Gerard began heading out of the cul de sac. He took the roads north onto the freeway and suddenly had a plan in mind for something he had never realized how bad he wanted to do. 

A right turn onto John J. Montgomery freeway took him directly to the Coronado Bridge and a flutter of anxiety filled him when the first set of tires made contact with the bridge. 

A blue sign providing a suicide hotline number greeted him at first, then another warning him not to stop at anytime. He didn’t listen, of course. The view of the bay and all of the boats in the harbor were such a sight to see for the first time. Under any other circumstances, he would have enjoyed it. 

He drove for about six-hundred feet and parked his car on the side of the narrow, one-lane road. Luckily, there hadn’t been anyone else on the bridge at the late hour except a single car traveling in the opposite direction.

The view down to the water was 200 feet. From that height, he thought he might have seen a few fish swimming around or a piece of trash floating along. It hadn’t been bright enough to tell. 

He placed a leg over the waist-high barrier, and straddled it. The lights and the music that came from the city gave him something to miss. What were the odds that Sonja would have him do two jobs in his hometown?

He tilted his weight back and forth over the edge of the barrier, thinking how much easier his life would be if he would have said no to Sonja’s offer. He figured that if he had said no, he could have just jumped over the edge, and he’d have Frank for the rest of eternity. 

That thought filled his mind, and with the most temporary, childlike naivety, he pretended that that would happen, so he closed his eyes and let the the slight gust of wind comeing towards him to all the work. 

Sensations of nausea filled his stomach as he began his descent to the ocean. As he gained speed, the air pushed his clothes and his hair in his face. He reached out for something to catch his balance, not because he didn’t want to fall. 

What woke him the next morning was a ringing in his ears that was identical to what he had heard when he hit the concrete surface of the water.


	6. VI

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written, and my death count is officially up to two-hundred and eleven. Most of my kills have involved burning large groups of people alive, and I’ve almost mastered it: blocking off exits, rigging water heaters and gas stoves to explode. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been blown back and woken up in a hospital room with temporarily bruised ribs or a broken arm.

I haven’t talked to Sonja much, but Teresa eats dinner with me every once in a while. She’s underappreciated, I can tell that much. But, she did tell me how she and Sonja met, and boy, was it a story.

When Teresa doesn’t eat with me, I have these horrible nightmares. Sometimes they come after Teresa leaves, so I make sure to wake up as soon as she’s gone.

They always involve people I don’t know from all over the world screaming at me in different languages, all of which I understand. Most of them are completely naked. They tell me the nastiest things about Frank and how they think what I’m doing for him is awful. They keep talking about overcrowding and it’s like they’re preparing for doomsday or something. What’s going to get over crowded? Why will it be my fault?

After they’ve had their fun yelling, they swarm around me and pin me to the ground. Sometimes they crucify me, and I lay on the cross, bleeding out until I wake up, and other times they tie me to a tree and burn me alive. One thing is consistent: when I die, I will wake up.

I’ve tried my best to avoid sleeping by drinking all the coffee my immortal heart can handle, but just before I go into cardiac arrest, the Saint snaps me out and resets my system. Every caffeine pill and every street drug I’ve tried always fails. I fall asleep mid-task and wake up in the restaurant.

I’m not saying I’m going to do it, but what would happen if I were to end the deal. The Devil owns my soul, right, so I’d probably go to Hell, right? And never see Frank again. Great. 

Saving Frank is like holding a rose. Not a rose you get from the grocery store in bouquets. A real, homegrown rose. He doesn’t have perfectly red petals and a straight stem. He’s got some scarlet petals. Some have a black gradient coming from the base of his flower. Instead of pointing at the sky, his bulb tilts toward the person holding him. He doesn’t have too many leaves, and neither does the bush he was cut from. His petals have just begun to open. Saving Frank is like holding a rose. I’ve got his life in my hands, but the thorns are tearing up my skin.

I’m losing my touch. Goodnight.

XXXVIII

Whenever Lucifer left Hell, she never cared about the eroticism of the outfits she wore. Clothes were a luxury in Hell, only afforded to the higher-ups. Even though she treasured her ability to heedlessly show off her cleavage, she knew better than enter the kingdom of heaven one arm movement away from a nip-slip. 

Apparently, God valued humility. His “Kingdom,” so to speak, was nothing like the castle Luci had designed in Hell. God’s residence was more of a cloud than a building. When mortals or other beings entered to face judgment, the only things that manifested were the things necessary for the exchange. No decorations. No clothing. Most importantly, No physical bodies. 

Even though Luci and The Almighty had not met in the official part of Heaven, any place that God created other than Earth was part of the kingdom. She insisted that she not meet him in Heaven because of all the feelings it would bring back, so as their meeting grew near, He had prepared a small area; a sort of spiritual quarantine in the cosmos for them to speak.

Luci sat, floated rather, in the void and waited for God to arrive. Considering He was the one who zapped her up in the cloud, she thought he would be there when she had first arrived. Her wait was short.

The Almighty appeared in a white suit. He resided in the body of a middle-aged, middle-eastern man with many small moles covering his face and neck. The last time she had seen God in person was in Mexico. Then, He had taken over the body of the owner of a local shoe store. 

God’s flaw was that He was jealous, not unforgiving; so, when His child reached out to reconcile, He took her offer to meet. He even allowed her to plan the ordeal. Luci chose the venue of a Mexican cantina to throw Him off. It had been millennia since God had even heard from Hell, so she wanted to make it seem as if her empire was falling. The bar was a dump: full of drunks, drugs, and only a PVC ceiling fan to relive the heat of the Oaxaca sun.

That had been where Lucifer snagged her body: a young Oaxacan prostitute who hadn’t had any children yet. She had been sitting at the bar when she felt His hand on her shoulder. He nearly jumped at her sight when she turned around.

“My child, what has happened to you?”

She laid on thick tears. “I’m weak. I bet part of my power in a deal, and I lost.

“You have given Heavenly power to a mortal being?” He sat at the stool next to her. “Do you know how dangerous that is?”

“He died. It was too much for him to handle.”

“I rest his soul. I am the Lord.” 

She slid her empty glasses across the bar. “I can’t do this anymore.” She rubbed her raw, blood-shot eyes, trying to exploit her bodies humanity. 

“Then don’t, my child. Join me in Heaven, and you will be able to be an angel again.” A rejoicing smile stretched his lips. “How does that sound?”

She sneered at him to get him vulnerable. “It sounds terrible. You want me to be a silly little archangel like Gabriel and Michael? I’ve already made so much for myself. Why would I throw it all away to be your servant?”

“To repay me for your sins. I am the Lord, and it is by my doing, my pushing and my rulings, that you were able to create your Hell as it is today.” 

“You very well may have given me something to rebel against and my existence, but it was me, my power that made Hell a well-oiled machine. You can’t leave Heaven for more than a day without one of your henchmen asking for your word. I haven’t been there in a month and it hasn’t gone to shit.”

He cringed at the use of foul language.

“Do you know how I got this powerful?”

He cocked his head, waiting for an answer. 

“My ways are more appealing than yours. Your creations like me better.”

“They do not!”

“Heaven and Hell run on a game of numbers! You and I both know it. I have billions more people in Hell than you do in Heaven because your cult is too strict to stay a part of.”

“How dare you call my following a cult?” He banged His fist on the table. Luci had Him right where she wanted Him. “My followers are devoted to my son and I.”

“Your precious son! You know, I never met Jesus. I can bet you that if I did—if I spent just one night with him—he’d be on team Lucifer.”

“You most certainly could not!”

“Why don’t you have the blushing virgin pop you out another Messiah, and we’ll see.” It was all a joke really. 

Now look where they were.

 

“I see you’ve kept your form.” God commented as he began to float on the opposite side of the room. 

“Yeah. I’ve been able to use my grace to keep this hag alive for twenty-something years. Impressive, right?”

“Yes, my child.” For a second, she thought she saw him smile. 

“You know what I love about Hell? I get to meet so many people. I take little things that I like from them; like the way they styled their hair, or how they walked and crossed their legs when they were alive. It allowed me to learn how to talk like a human. I use contractions now, and I don’t go out proclaiming ‘I am Lucifer,’ every five seconds. You could learn a thing or two from your own creations.”

“The point is not for me to learn from them, but for them to learn from me.”

Luci scoffed. “Sure, big guy. What’s going on, anyway? Why do I need to be here? I got your letter a few weeks back. I’d like to inform you that The Acromortus has been following directions as instructed. You’ll probably be discouraged to know that things are happening in my favor. The ritual is almost a third done.”

The Almighty Father leaned forward in his seat. “How do you do it?”

“I can see what the humans see and feel what the humans feel. You gave them free will, and that was your biggest mistake.”

“I am starting to see that. I shall try again one day. I will take greater care next time.” 

“Do you think it would be safe to begin the arrangements?”

He nodded earnestly. “You may begin with the crimping. Take your time, my child. There is time to spare.”

XXXIV

According to Leviticus 20:27, mediums and spiritist should be put to death. Under the same guidelines, it can be extrapolated that anyone who encourages or endorses their sacrilegious practice should also be punished. Gerard had read all of this on his way to the convention centre in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. He had begged Teresa for answers, and she promised she’d do what she could do. The next day in his bag, he found a large, authentic, leather-bound Bible with verses marked out with post-its. The dates had been written on each note in a predestined way. 

There hadn’t been any rules about the Bible, meaning that he could check the verses for any day without fear of repercussions. Sometimes, there were multiple verses marked out with the same date, and no dates appeared in the book with the dates before he had gotten it. Sure, it added extra weight to his bag, but it allowed him to know why he was doing what he was doing. 

Today’s verse was self-explanatory, seeing as he had found a single ticket to An Open Séance with May Kreo. May was a world-renowned medium which made her a perfect target. 

A large line of people had formed outside the door. The entire wall of the convention center had been covered in a banner advertising the event in large, blue letters. A silhouette of the woman’s face was visible through the designs of gentle water with lily pads and lotus flowers on the surface. 

The majority of people in the line were older women. Some came alone, and others in groups. Some were there to channel their late loved ones, and others were there because they had heard about May on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Most people didn’t have the native accent, so in that regard, Gerard wouldn’t stand out, but in every other category of physical attributes, he did not look like he belonged there.

Gerard had gotten lost in the sound of the leaves brushing against each other in the wind, so he hadn’t even noticed when they began allowing people in the building. The woman behind him shoved him from behind, and if he hadn’t waved his hands in the air to gain his balance, he would have fallen on his face. 

A smell of freshly burned sage filled the air of the hall the séance was to take place in. Two women had been walking down the aisles of chairs to smudge the room of negative energies. 

He took note of the single entrance to the room. The lack of emergency exits could be attributed to the fact that the séance was taking place on the second story of the building. The only door would be easy to lock and barricade. 

He took a seat in the center, back row of the chairs and struck a non-threatening pose as to not attract the attention of anyone. He had a second of quiet to himself and took the time to focus on his breathing. Breathing had gotten so much harder ever since the nightmares came, and even when he was at rest, it felt like his diaphragm was a pit of knifes and every time he inhaled he would be stabbed. It was more a of mental sensation than actual pain. Nonetheless, it never went away. 

At the front of the stage, the Saint of Death took a wide stance and began rolling her shoulders in preparation. She waved to try to comfort him, and it half worked. He waved back and rested his head on the chair in front of him. He aimed his gaze at his shoes. 

A few small scuffs grazed the toes of his Oxfords. The laces had been tied in a small bow that faced away from him. That was how he knew he had woken up in them. Whenever he had tied his own shoes, the bows would always face him. He began to shake his leg and drown out the chattering from the people around him. 

He could feel the chair next to him shake as someone sat in it. 

“Are you okay, man?” The person sitting next to him asked. Gerard looked up at him with the face of someone who was about to vomit the fifteen beers they had drank. “Dude, did you see any ghosts?”

He didn’t answer because the last thing he needed was to start a conversation with some stranger that would end in an explanation about what had happened to him and Frank.

The man fiddled with his hands exposing the tattooed letters on his palms. “I’m Klaus, by the way.”

“G—Jared.” He had been that on edge, he mispronounced his own name. 

“Hey Jared! If you don’t mind me asking, who are you here for?” His voice was smooth and deep, clashing with his friendly demeanor. 

Gerard shook his head. 

“Aw, a skeptic!”

“I’m not a skeptic!” He growled.

“Sorry, bub.” He held is hands up in defense. The words on his palms read, “Hello,” and, “Goodbye.” 

He laughed. “You’ve got those tattoos recently, didn’t you?” 

Klaus smiled. “Yeah!” He rubbed at his ink bashfully. “How’d you know?”

“My boyfriend used to have tattoos. His were only that bright the day after he got ‘em.” He let a chuckled escape his throat.

“Good observation. You said he used to have tattoos. Are you going to try to talk to him today?”

He sat back in his chair and folded his arms, extending his legs. “We’ll see.”

Klaus disregarded the feeling that Gerard didn’t want to talk. “I’m here for my dad. He adopted me when I was born.” He flopped around his painted fingers. “He raised me and my five siblings in his mansion, home-schooled us, and sent us into the world all on his own. I’ve been to so many séances and mediums, but I just can’t get through to him, so I thought I might try May. I got the tattoos to remind me to never give up. Do you know where the words are from?”

“A Oujia board.”

“Yeah! Have you tried to use a Ouija board with your boyfriend?”

Gerard shook his head. It had never occurred to him that he could do that.

“Oh. That was the first thing I did when my father died. I left the house after we got into a big argument one day, and I left for Vietnam.”

“Why Vietnam?”

“He made us all learn a foreign language, and I chose Vietnamese. I’ve been fluent my whole life, pretty much. Anyway, He died before I got to come back home and catch up with him. I got depressed, became a drunk, and pushed my daughter and her mother away. Right now, her mother is in a hospital in Ho Chi Mihn City, and she’s keeping me from seeing my daughter. If I can’t make things right with my daughter, I thought id at least try to make things alright with my dad.”

He laughed. “You have a daughter? I thought you—” 

“You thought I what?”

“Never mind.”

More and more people filled the seats and at the top of the hour, a loud roar came from the back of the room as May walked into the hall from the side. She grabbed the microphone once she had stepped on stage and commanded the attention of the room. 

“Hello my lovelies!” Her soothing voice graced the airwaves, and an applause took over the crowd. She moved her Arm around to make her caftan flow around her. “How are we doing today? My name is May Kreo as some of you may know, and I was born with the ability to speak with those who have passed through the veil of death. Without further ado, I will begin today’s open séance.” She raised her free hand to the ceiling. “Now, we are going to dim the lights down low, and we are going to attempt to communicate with the dead.”

And with that, the room became pitch black for a second, and a single spotlight shown on May. She began to make a low humming noise, which was eerie in the darkness. She pointed to the left side of the room with her eyes closed. “Do I have someone named Jose? A Jose S. who has passed on?”

A woman with her long black hair in a side braid jetted up in her place with her arm raised. “Me! Me! He’s my grandfather!” She yelled as a second spotlight was cast on her. 

“Kieari,” She called to a worker. “Can we get this woman a microphone? Thank you.” She continued when the woman was ready. “What’s your name sweetie?”

“Marisol.” She spoke a little too closely to the microphone. The whole room laughed at the feedback.

“Tell me Marisol, did your grandfather, your Papi as he calls himself, have a thing for black women?”

She chuckled. “Yeah, he did. My grandma is Afro-Latina, and so are all their grandchildren.”

“Good. He’s trying to make a move on me right now, and as I see him as a young man in his uniform I can’t help but be attracted.” The room laughed again.

A tear glimmered in the light around Marisol’s eye. “Yeah, that was him. He was such a big flirt. He had three families in three different states, and then he settled in Puerto Rico when he retired from the Navy.”

“I see. He keeps telling me to tell you to give him some money to double. What does that mean?”

She blushed. “Oh my god! He was a big gambler and he would always tell me to give him my spare change I found on the streets, so he could double it in a game of poker.” 

“Well, all right, I seem to be losing him, Marisol, but he wants me to let you know that he is doing just fine with Jesus. Can we give Marisol a hand everyone?”

“Thank you so much!” Marisol handed the mic back and sat down to the sound of more applause. 

From the dark corner of the room, Gerard could see the Saint. Her skull was partially hidden beside the temporarily mounted curtains on the stage, however, her boney finger pointing directly at him was completely visible.

May closed her eyes again and turned her head as if she had heard someone calling her name. She walked over to Gerard’s side of the stage and shouted, “Frank? Or Frankie I.?” She held an extended pointer finger and thumb to her chest like a gun. “Anybody?”

He couldn’t believe it. He was one raised hand away from speaking to Frank again. This time, without going through the Devil. 

“Over here!” He stood, and Klaus grabbed his arm and shook him proudly. “I knew Frank!”

The stage hand ran over and gave him the mic. 

“What’s your name son?”

“Gerard.” He held it an adequate distance away from his face.

“Frank seems to have suffered a violent death, and for that reason, I will not ask you to relive it. But, he has given me insight surround the moments immediately after he died. He tells me he wants you to know that he saw you bleeding on the floor, and he saw the Virgin Mary herself save you. He says he told her to, and she agreed that a person as important and strong willed as you shall not die so soon. Although he himself cannot find you now, and it causes him some unrest, he knows that you are continuing on the path you have been destined for and that you are doing right by him. He tells me he loves you, and that he relishes in your love as well.”

What did she mean he couldn’t find him? 

“Can you ask him what he thinks about the deal?”

“Of course.” She closed her eyes for a second. “He knows nothing of a deal, but he wishes for you to reconcile with his parents. It appears that he is under the impression that you are still at school in California. Oh-He has been taken from me! Stolen by a higher force that I cannot fight. I’m sorry, young man.”

His voice trembled. “No, he can’t be. How does he not know?”

“I don’t know, son. Peace be with you.” She moved to the other side of the stage.

He sat back in his seat and was greeted by a whisper from Klaus. 

“Well, Gerard, at least you got to—” 

“You know what? Fuck this.” He interrupted Klaus midsentence, and he couldn’t give less of a fuck. He grabbed his bag and shoved his way down the row and stormed down the aisle. Just before he reached the exit, he pulled out the VX diffuser Sonja had given him, pulled out the pin, and tossed it behind him. He didn’t bother staying to barricade anything.

As he made his way out of the convention center, the toxic nerve agent began to infect the air with VX gas which would kill the heretics inhaling the scentless fumes within minutes. Gerard didn’t want to stay as much as he got along with the Saint. He didn’t need to be there.

The rest of the day, he had one mission: fall asleep. He knew he wasn’t going to accomplish it on his own, so he found a crowded city street and stood in the middle of a busy intersection. The last thing he saw before the darkness was a large advertisement on the side of a skyscraper for cologne. A familiar arm held the red bottle of perfume; an arm full of recognizable tattoos of the Virgin Mary, sacred hearts, stars and a chainsaw. It was the arm of Frank, Gerard knew that much. The name on the bottle was written in plain black font. “Goodnight.”

A car swerved far enough left to just miss Gerard by a few inches, only to be hit by another car traveling in the lane next to it. Thankfully, he didn’t feel the collision.

XXXV

The emptiness of the plate in front of him when he awoke in the restaurant startled him enough to send his fist into the wood of the table. His silverware clattered, and his plate broke from the force. Once the shaking from the hit had subsided, the light above Gerard’s table began to flicker, and after a few seconds, it burnt out. 

All the other diners in the room sneered at him and left their seats for the ballroom. 

He sat alone in the room with his head on the edge of the table, trying to avoid the glass shards, with his hands on his neck. His skin was hot and wet from the outburst, and his breathing became more and more erratic. Small curses could be heard coming from him if one were to be close enough.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck me. No! Shit!” He cried. “I can’t. I can’t.”

The sound of Teresa’s shoes made a small clicking sound on the floor, but Gerard did not look up at her. She took the seat opposite to him just as she had been doing since the beginning of the deal. 

“What’s wrong?” She managed to get his attention; as much attention as she could, considering that his manic breathing was still taking most of his concentration. “You don’t look good.”

“I can’t live this life!” He reached out for her hands. “Take it back from me!” He sputtered a breath. “Please! Where’s Frank. Please, just tell me where he is. I need to see him and talk to him. I need to know that he’s okay.”

“Why? What happened?”

“It was the medium! She told me that Frank has no idea about what I’m doing for him. Why doesn’t he know?”

Teresa found herself in a position she knew she’d eventually be in. Her options were to tell Gerard the truth and face demotion or keep up the lie and please Lucifer. She’d be a traitor to someone no matter what: Her wife, or her only friend.

“Gerard, what I’m about to tell you can get us both in deep shit, so listen and don’t repeat anything I tell you to Sonja or anyone else. Do you hear me?”

He nodded his head and tried to clear his mucus-filled nostrils. 

“That day you heard Frank in your ears, the first night you met us, it wasn’t real. Sonja made you think you were hearing Frank. She and God have been blocking Frank’s spirit from seeing you like he normally would be able to as an apparition.”

“But I see him every day! He’s there. It’s him following me around and keeping me on track!” He was growing quite hysterical.

“No, it’s not. Sonja has been using his image to keep you motivated. Frank has no knowledge of what you’re doing. He has become a heavenly creature since he died, and has no business dealing with Hellish problems.”

“Heaven?”

“Yeah. You fell from there when you kissed her lips.”

“Why are you telling me this?” 

“Because I fear what will happen to you if you don’t hear it.” She retracted her hands and stood.

“No! Don’t leave me. There going to kill me in the ballroom! It happens every night!”

She tried to smile. “Yet you’re still alive right now. Don’t worry about it. It’s but a dream.” She said as she left the restaurant.

The monotony of the restaurant killed him. He found himself walking down the hallway to the ballroom, hearing the music of the broken piano, and walking into the room of naked people. Just as they had the day before, and the day before that, everyone in the room stopped what they had been doing and gathered around the entrance where Gerard stood. 

“Hey, Prettyboy!” The man closest to him greeted with a smile of rotten teeth. “How’s the food?” He grabbed him by the lapels of his old, funeral suit and threw him in the room. The crowd of people cheered and grunted in pleasure. “We all fall one day.” He said as he pushed him to the floor.

“We all fall one day.” The party repeated in unison as he gathered himself on the ground. 

They formed a large circle around him.

“We all fall one day.” 

He began crawling backward to try to escape.

“We all fall one day.”

A panic filled his gut. 

“We all fall one day.” 

Gerard felt the ground below him disappear with one movement of his hand, and with the last cheer from the people, he was falling down a circular hole that had appeared in the floor.

The air around him as he fell was cold at the beginning, and his hair wiped itself around his face in fury. He tried to move his limbs to grab on to something, but each time he tried to reach a wall of the hole, he couldn’t touch it. 

For a while, he kept falling until the temperature of the air rose enough to calm him down, so he closed his eyes and slept. 

XXXVI

Heaven for Frank was his recollection of life. He spent the rest of eternity playing his memories on loop. Through the good and bad, he never dared to fast forward a single part. It wouldn’t be authentic if he did. 

There was something about his own pain that he found beautiful. It shaped him to be the man he was, and especially since he had been forced out of purgatory, he liked to use his resting time to remember and imagine what his life would be like if it would have continued. 

A memory queued its way onto Frank’s reel. 

The banner on the wall across from his seat on the couch read in large blue letters, “Happy promotion, Frank!” 

He couldn’t find anything happy or sad about promotion. There was of course the natural anxieties that every incoming Freshman felt, but they didn’t taint his anticipation too much.

All of his friends had made a pact to apply for Holy Trinity Catholic High School. Sure, Frank had the grades and clean record needed to be accepted into the school, and sure his parents would happily pay the fifteen-thousand-dollar tuition a year; but Frank would have rather jumped off the Empire State building than spend the next four years of his life in uniforms and mandatory mass. So, he stayed mum about his friends plan because if his mom would have found out about it, she would have done everything in her power to ensure that Frank became a Holy Trinity Friar come August. 

It boiled down to a choice of friendship or freedom, and if keeping his friends meant having to surrender his individuality in terms of his physical appearance and his artistic, verbal, and spiritual expression, then he had no problem with being a loner in public school.

Frank wouldn’t have felt safe at that school anyway. When he was in the seventh grade, he went to lunch with his mom and her church friends. He distinctly remembered them gossiping about a boy named Emmanuel who was beaten after some of his peers found out he was gay over the weekend. When he went back to school the following Monday, he was expelled. Frank would never voluntarily put himself in that situation. He had dreams and his whole life ahead of him.

Even though he had invited all of his friends to the party, none of them showed, which didn’t bother him as much as it should have. He figured since they weren’t ever going to see each other because they were going to different schools, it was probably a good idea that they don’t go to each other’s parties anymore. It would be too painful for him to see all his buddies growing up and changing without him. 

Yet again, the sensible decision—in Frank’s mind—proved to be the more boring one. His mother had invited all of her usual church friends that would hug Frank too tight and smelled like the perfume section at Macy’s. Conveniently, none of them had brought any of their kids, and even if they had, its not like he would have gone out of his way to make friends with them. His father was on the porch with two of his old Navy friends drinking whiskey and smoking illegally-imported Cuban cigars. The previous day Frank Sr. had found a stereo system at Fry’s Electronics, so the whole property was filled with the top 40 pop charts: Ricky Martin, Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears, Cher. Its not that Frank hated pop music, he just had better things to listen to. 

The party had become more of an event for his parents—okay his mother. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if his friends had shown. 

What finally got Frank’s heartbeat up was the sun setting. He was promised that at sunset they would cut his cake, and sure enough, when the sky was orange, his mom poked her head in through the sliding glass door from outside to tell everyone to come outside, and to, “Frank, get your dad.” 

He ran to the front door and opened it, coughing at the smell of aged tobacco. 

“Dad!”

“Frank, cover your nose.” Frank Sr. ordered. The last thing he needed was his son to grow up and be a smoker.

He pulled the collar of his shirt over his nose. “Were gonna cut the cake. Hurry.” He closed the door and ran through the, now, empty living room to the back yard. 

The whole party surrounded him outside as he stood in front of his cake with his mother holding a knife to cut it behind him. She was about to move closer to begin cutting when out of the back, one of his uncles from San Bernardino yelled, “Hey, Wait!”

He made his way to the front of the group, wine glass in hand. He grabbed Frank by the shoulder drunkenly. “I just want to say that I’m so proud of my nephew! Can we all give Frankie a hand?” Everyone clapped. Frank hated the attention. “I got one piece of advice for you in high school, okay?” Frank nodded. “Stay the hell away from girls,” he took a long pause like he had made a mistake, “Or boys, or whatever your, preferred flavor is. Focus on your studies, man. You’ll be fine!” He took a sip from his wine glass, and reassumed his spot in the crowd, but not before receiving an angered shove from Linda, who had still been holding a knife.

Frank felt gross; like they had been onto him; like he hadn’t done a good enough job at keeping quiet. He scratched the side of his face. His hand brushed against the metal stud in his ear. Was it the earrings? Was it the chipping black paint in his finger nails? The smudges of red and black makeup he sometimes wore around his eyes? The way he wore his pants? Was it engrained in his face? Is that what tipped his family off? They knew, didn’t they? He failed.

Frank’s soul ached and jerked at the recollection of this instance, so he searched through his filing cabinet of memories and tried to find a better one to play.

He had been laying face down on his bedroom floor. Gerard had been sitting against the wall across from him reading a book, and if he remembered correctly, he had just turned sixteen years old. He rested his chin on a bowl filled with cherries allowing him to easily spit the pits out without having to touch them. 

The first cherry he pulled out was a rich red, almost purple. With his front teeth, be bit into it along its line of symmetry, exposing the pale-yellow pit in the center. A thick trail of juice ran down his first two fingers. It settled around his nails. The more he squeezed the cherry, the more blood red liquid came and mesmerized him. 

For a quick second, he looked up at Gerard with an evil grin. He showed him his hand.

Gerard lowered his book a bit and observed Frank’s fingers. “Hot.” He remarked.

Frank chuckled as an idea popped into his head. “Take off your shirt.” He moved closer to him.

He laughed sheepishly. “What? Why?” 

“Come on, just do it. I want to try something.” 

What broke Gerard was Frank’s eyes. “Fine.”

Frank Army-crawled his way over gleefully as Gerard took off his oversized Anthrax t-shirt. He tucked it under himself, so he could reach it quickly if he wanted to put it back on. 

Frank took a half-eaten cherry and held it over Gerard’s glowing flesh. 

“Hey, no—” Gerard swatted away Frank’s hand.

“Let me do it!” 

He held the cherry over him again and squeezed it like a lime before he had time to resist again. The juice splatted down the slope of his abdomen, pooling in his navel, threatening to dribble down onto his pants. He set the bowl of cherries next to him and got on his knees. Gerard blushed as Frank swung his leg over his and sat on him in a straddle. 

Using the most unthreatening fingers possible, he pulled down the belt of Gerard’s pants a few centimeters exposing the stretched skin above his hip bones and the beginning wisps of pubic hair. The air became thinner in the room.

Frank continued juicing the fruit over Gerard, creating a mess of red all over the both of them. He made his way up to his clavicles and neck muscles and shoulders with plenty of cherries to spare. 

Gerard dipped his finger in the liquid and brought it to his tongue. The sweetness stunned him. Did Frank think he tasted that sweet?

Frank pressed a bleeding cherry to his bicep, creating a circle of juice that clung to his skin in the shape of a wound almost. 

“Oh! I’ve been shot!” Gerard joked. 

He pressed the same cherry to Gerard’s forehead twice. “Bang, bang, motherfucker.” He dropped the fruit back into the bowl and stared at the mock bullet holes on his face. 

Gerard stuck his tongue out as if he were dead, and Frank couldn’t help but suck the juice off his face. 

Before he had the chance to remember what happened next, the memory faded away with an interruption. A woman Frank had never seen before walked toward him in his void. He knew she was alive because she had a body. She was shorter than most with deep skin and short natural hair. If he still had a body, he would have jumped on her and embraced her. He attempted to do so with his spirit, and it half worked.

“Your name?” She asked, placing her hand on his spirit, stroking it to comfort him. 

The touch of a human had never felt so good. Her hand was warm, and her flesh wasn’t rough or peeling. She took great care of her hands, he could tell.

“Frank. Frank Iero.”

“Spell it please.”

“I-E-R-O.”

“Thank you, son.”

“Who are you?” He asked.

“I’m a medium. Gerard wishes to speak with you.”

“Gerard?” He was overjoyed. If he had eyes, he’d surely be crying. “What is he saying?”

“He needs closure. Would you be willing to give him that?”

“Tell him I saw him get shot. I was there when he was in the hospital. I was right next to him in spirit, and I was fucking scared. I was screaming my head off, but he couldn’t hear me. He was losing so much blood, I didn’t think he was going to make it. I was trying my hardest to stop the bleeding, but then the Virgin Mary herself came and saved him! You have to tell him that. I know he’s not going to believe it, but that’s the truth. I made her do it. I told her all about how important he is, and she agreed. We were only nineteen! There’s a problem, though. No matter how hard I try, I can’t find him anywhere. I can find my parents and my old friends, but not him. I love him so much! Why can’t I find him?”

“Calm down, it’s okay! There is a reason for everything. You will hopefully get to see him soon. Now, what do you think about the deal?

“What deal?”

“I don’t know. He wants to know how you feel about the deal.”

“I don’t know anything about a deal. Tell him that I want him to go back down to San Diego and talk to my parents. Tell him to tell them everything. It’s all I need. The school won’t mind if he takes a day off.”

“Thank you—” 

She disappeared. In her place appeared Mary with her hands locked in contrition. 

“Where’d she go?” Frank asked. 

“She does not belong here.”

“She let me talk to Gerard! Why can’t I do that on my own? If I really try, I can watch just about any person on the planet. Why not him?”

“We feel that it would be best for you to have some time away from Gerard to reflect. Actually, I’d prefer if we had this conversation face to face. Is that alright?”

“Yeah.” Not long after his response, he looked down and saw his hands and his bare feet just below them. A few more seconds of observation and disbelief later, and he came to the realization that he was naked. He was ashamed because Mary, Mother of God, had been standing right in front of him. 

“Much better. Frank, it was the night you died I had told you that Gerard would bring on a new era of life. He is important. He is prophesized. You too are important. You are a part of the prophecy.”

“What prophecy?”

“We have hidden you in Heaven because Gerard has formed an alliance with Lucifer.”

“The deal?”

“Yes. He has become a mercenary of sorts, with the promise that if he sends enough people to Hell, he will get to reunite with you. He loves you so much that he is willing to end the lives of hundreds of people on the false hope that you will be brought back to life. His love for you has blinded him to the dirty tricks of the devil and because of that, he will bring forth a necessary change that will alter the path of history forever.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You must have faith in me. For without you, Gerard will become a servant of Hell and spend the rest of his existence working for the devil, and neither of you will ever see each other again.”

There was some sort of glimmer in Mary’s eye that caught Frank’s attention; like Jedi mind control, except he was fully consenting. This woman carried the savior in her womb. If God could trust her, Frank figured he could too. 

“What’s my part in the prophecy?”

She smiled. “Gerard’s soul has already begun to deteriorate, as it now belongs to the devil. As time continues, it will grow much darker and more malevolent causing him to become evil. The man you love will become a monster, and you are the only person who can stop him from gaining power in the underworld. To get to this point, you will need to become an official Heavenly being. It shouldn’t come as a surprise when I tell you that you don’t belong here. There is plenty that you have not been forgiven for, but my son and our Father are willing to atone your sins if you can prove your devotion.”

“How?”

“You will ask Our Father for forgiveness through confession and undergo a thorough cleansing through baptism. Humans are flawed and small sins against God are not as important as some. There is one moral abomination in particular that we will not be able to excuse unless you are forgiven, however.”

She didn’t need to say which one. Anyone with half a brain would know that the Order of Heaven would not dare employ anyone who was a practicing homosexual; one who had not renounced their urges of sodomy and was sworn to celibacy. One who did not recognize that their relationships, no matter how loving and how prosperous they were, are abominations, and therefore something to be ashamed of, because in it, they were defying God. 

Frank never saw Gerard as an abomination. He wasn’t ever ashamed to love him, but if that’s what he needed to say to save him, then those were the words he’d say. 

Words are a disgusting thing. They don’t always reflect how one feels, or what’s right, and sometimes, if they are believed to be said by the right person, they can shape the world. That’s what Frank needed to do: shape the world. If that is what his Lord needed him to say to save the person he cared very much about, then he’d say them, and they wouldn’t mean a damned thing. 

“If all is understood, then I shall leave you to be forgiven.” She faded into the light, and he was left alone.

He dropped to his knees. The surface below him was a cloud, so unlike regular, hard earth, it cupped around his knees and held him steadily in place. He folded his hands and brought them to his nose. He didn’t have to search too much to find all of the right words sitting in his memory. 

“In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been over a year since my last confession.”

A parting in the clouds formed and a gorgeous yellow light blessed the room. “Go ahead.” The Almighty responded. 

“I have committed one of the worst sins of the flesh and entered a homosexual relationship. The only reason I am no longer in this relationship is because of my own death. In life, I had so shamelessly engaged in sodomy and seeing another man in the same light I should have seen a woman. In these actions, I have so wrongly offended you and your teachings, and for that I apologize. I am grateful now that I’m dead because this ensures that I never again indulge in the wicked temptations of the flesh. Oh, God, will you forgive me for my many sins?” He wanted to wash his mouth with bleach.

“Yes, child. You are forgiven. As penance, you shall undergo another baptism and join the Order of Heaven.”

“Understood. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.”

“Now, child, fall back, and you shall be cleaned.” 

Frank opened his arms in a T-pose and fell back wards into the cloud. He was surrounded in a pool of holy water. The sensation it caused on his skin was less than pleasant. It was as if the Holy spirit was infecting every cell in his body and cleaning them with Ajax. He could see the ink from his tattoos that had been pulled from his skin floating in the water in front of him.

He jerked around in the water at the feeling of electricity in his muscles. Even though he tried to raise himself to the surface of the water, he only sank deeper and deeper in the pool. 

It had been way too long since he had taken a fresh breath of air, so he tried to take one even though he knew he wouldn’t inhale any oxygen. He took in so much water with every breath, and it stung his nasal passage and put immense pressure on his head. His vision went black.

He kept trying to tread water on his own, but the more and more he moved, the less he could feel the water and the more the pressure in his head decreased. 

“Open your eyes.” Mary called. 

He opened his eyes and saw her inches away from his face. The cold of the atmosphere and the wetness of his skin and hair made him shake. 

“Are you ready?” She grabbed his hands.

His teeth chattered as he nodded. “Yes.”


	7. VII

It should be illegal for two working class emergency-room physicians to have children, because it causes neglect. Teresa and her two siblings were raised on a strict regimen of discipline. They ate what their dad told them to eat, wore what their mom told them to ware, and went to sleep before nine so they could be tucked in before one parent had to work the night shift at the hospital. They always did their homework and made decent grades. During the right seasons, they all played sports. Even with the jam-packed schedule Teresa had in her adolescence, she was the youngest child, and therefore found time for mischief. 

She was the only sibling in the house that dared to defy the heads of the household. She’d sneak downstairs after everyone else had gone to sleep and sit in front of the giant box TV. She’d press the buttons on the front of the machine, so it was at the lowest volume that was still audible and adjust the antennas to pick up the soap-opera channels. 

The signal would always land on Stompers around nine-thirty at night. It was a soap about a rich family in the salad-bowl of California that owned a grape plantation which turned into a winery when the oldest daughter married the son of the owners of Nor-Cal’s largest distillery. Courtney Rogers starred as the oldest daughter and her husband was played by a pre-Emmy Robert Harris.

For the most part, nine-year-old Teresa did not understand what happened on the show. Partially because she was young and naive, and partially because she wasn’t a religious watcher. The show was the only thing in Teresa’s life she had a say in, and often enough, she had to turn the TV off at the sounds of a car pulling into the driveway or a family member walking down the stairs.

Eventually, she got caught by her mom and took her spanking with a rag in her mouth. Her Stompers era had been put to an end.

Years had gone by when a more-informed Teresa sat at the dinner table to finish her homework. Her mother had walked into the house and set a large pile of mail right across from her before she planted a tired kiss on Teresa’s forehead and ran upstairs to change. 

On the top of the pile sat a magazine: Trust Television Weekly. Teresa recognized the upper part of Courtney Roger’s face on the cover. She grabbed for it, dropping her pencil on the floor, and took in the writing on the cover. “Courtney Rogers talks about her struggles after Stompers. [Page 24.]”

She turned to page 24 and learned all about Courtney’s trouble: How after Stompers was canceled, she became depressed and got addicted to barbiturates. And, now that she’s clean, she plans on getting married to her fiancé, and former co-star, Robert Harris. She explained for the first time about her two children which, prior to this interview, the world hadn’t known about. From what she said, it sounded like their father was a dick. 

It amazed Teresa that after all of these years, the people still cared about Courtney. They cared enough to be talking about her, to be remembering her and her work. She wondered if they would still care about her after she was dead. That’s what Teresa wanted for herself.

“Hey baby.” Her mom called as she came down the stairs in sweatpants and a t-shirt. “Whacha doin’?” She got closer to the table and stood over her for a second. “Oh, you’re reading those trash-mags! Baby put those down.” She said. “They’ll rot your brains.”

Her father took her to work with him on a summer day when no one else would be home. She didn’t mind going because she would get to sit in the waiting room of the E.R. and listen to the people talking. Some people waiting with higher tolerances for pain weren’t as opposed to talk and joking freely with the people they had come with. The others who were in more pain stayed quiet. The only noises coming from them were cries and groans that were barely audible under the sounds of the ambulances and cars outside. There weren’t many stories or jokes she got from them, but they were just as interesting to her.

Most wore contorted faces with drooping mouths. Some sported their tears, while others were too proud to not wipe them away. It fascinated Teresa how much she felt seeing all of these people as hurt as they had been. She wondered if how similarly she could replicate their emotions.

Sat across from her on this particular day was a young boy with his left arm hanging around in a swing. His face was red, and his eyes were bloodshot. He wouldn’t stop whispering into his mother’s chest as she held him close to her, “Please, Mommy! I don’t want to see a doctor. Please. No. No!” His mom merely stroked at his hair and blew cold air at his face. 

She left her seat and watched as the depression created in the chair by her body disappeared as she walked to the bathroom. Luckily for her, it had been a single-stall, unisex restroom, so if she was bad at her imitation, no one would see her.

The motion sensor light turned on as she opened the door, locked it behind her, and stood in front of the sink. She placed her hands on the sides of the sink and stared at herself in the mirror. 

She bore into her own soul through her coffee-colored eyes and tried her hardest to cry. The muscles around her eyes clenched, which was painful enough to get her tears started, but what kept her going was thinking about that little boy. She tried to imagine what his arm felt like: bones fractured, sockets dislocated, and skin scraped and bruised. The inability to move without feeling her muscles and bone fragments rubbing against each other, stimulating nerves and the warm type of pain that came from a scrape. That was the last thing she wanted. 

She remembered all of the times her parents missed her games and dances to work, and how many vacations she begged them to take her family on. She thought of all the times she just wanted to sit down and watch movies with her dad when her mom decided to make him take her to gamble at casinos. How many hours her parents could have spent with her if they had just cared more about their starving children. 

A crying lump settled in her throat and mucus nearly poured from her nose. She was halfway there. If she wanted to really sell it, she had to sound just as vulnerable as that little boy. 

“No.” She tried out, rubbing at her eyes. “Mommy, please!” She closed off half of her throat to make higher pitched sounds. “I don’t want to see a doctor.” She tried to build it up to a sob. “No. Why?” She carried on the word, trying to break it into more syllables without being to unrealistic. 

Part of herself detached from her body and forgot that she was acting. She had hit gold. She had become the little boy. Everything about her appearance convincingly showed pain. It showed fear and anxiety and her youth. It showed her raw talent.

With her newly found confidence in her abilities, she stopped her act and cleaned her face using toilet paper. When she came back out to assume her seat again, the boy and his mother had been gone, and an elderly woman took their seats. Teresa looked at her with a sniffle. 

“Is everything okay, hon?” She asked as she closed her magazine. 

Teresa nodded, rubbing her face to hide her smile. 

Teresa’s daddy always told her that she was a great actress. What he meant was that she was a great liar: always explaining how she never knew what happened to the last cookie in the jar or the twenty-dollar bill in her mother’s purse. Maybe he was right. The producers for, “The Headstrong Gang,” surely agreed.

It was a soap about a group of young people living in the Midwest going through the everyday bouts of high school. Teresa took the job when she was nineteen years old. Sure, she turned down three college acceptances, and yes, her parents threw a fit, but she was doing what she loved. 

At school, she had played leading and side parts in Annie, first, then Romeo and Juliet, then The Crucible, and so many more shows. It became addicting to her at one point, and she’d feel useless if she didn’t have any lines to memorize. It only made sense that she moved out to Hollywood to follow her dreams.

The cancelation of The Headstrong Gang after its second season didn’t discourage Teresa from accomplishing her dreams. She simply continued her search for a permanent role just as she had done before. A great joy filled her when she received a call from her agent informing her about an audition for a new show on late-night television called Never Say Never. 

Teresa walked into the audition room with one of the mini, complimentary water bottles they had offered out in the lobby. She transferred it to her left hand, so she could shake the hands of all the show representatives. 

The panel of representatives consisted of three men and a single woman. Their dress was business casual, making Teresa feel underdressed in her pair of jeans and baseball-style shirt.

“Whenever you’re ready!” The woman instructed. 

Teresa held the script out in front of her and began her lines with one of the men at the table. When she finished, he gave her praise out of respect, and instructed her to wait outside. 

She assumed the same seat she had taken before she auditioned. Luckily, none of the other bitches auditioning for the part of “Trisha,” had put their purse on it.

After nearly thirty minutes of waiting, the four directors stepped out of their room. 

“It’s now time for the interview portion of the audition to begin.” One of the men announced to the room. Teresa had never had to be interviewed as a part of an audition. “If I call your name, please step forward, and one of us will begin with you.” He called Teresa and three other people. They all made their way forward, and each person paired up with a representative. The person who was left for Teresa was the only woman. 

She shook Teresa’s hand. “Hey. I’m Sonja. Teresa, right?”

She nodded. 

“Let’s go find our own room.” She led her to the room on the end of the hallway. Teresa thought nothing of it, seeing as the other actors had been lead into their own private rooms as well. 

The door opened to a room that was too big to belong in the building considering it was in the corner of the hall. It was completely white, and the room had no windows, even though the room she had been in before did. It was almost like they were stepping through a portal to another realm. 

Sonja closed the door behind them and lead her to the only desk in the room. Teresa crossed her legs tightly once she took her seat on the appropriate side of the desk. 

“How was your day?” Sonja asked. 

“Fine.” Teresa appeased. “Where are we?”

“My office.” She responded as if there was nothing to be concerned about.

The room was surprisingly hot considering the rest of the building had been properly air-conditioned. 

“How much do you want this role?”

“I don’t want this role. I need this role. Times have been tough lately, shows are getting canceled, and I don’t know how much longer I can survive out here in the city on minimum wage.”

“I see.” Sonja reached down into the drawer beside her and pulled out her book of names. She opened it to a page in the middle of the book and placed a pen she had in her pocket in the spine. 

“What’s that?” Teresa asked.

“It’s a record of every life I’ve improved.”

She eyed the thick pile of pages. “That’s a lot of lives.” 

“You can be a part too.” Sonja offered, pushing the book towards her. 

“Sure, I can!” she laughed. “All I need is for you to give me the role.”

“All you need is to give me your soul.”

“My what?”

“Your soul. The God-given power that makes you you. The thing that connects you to him.”

“How are you going to take my soul? What do I even get out of it?”

“You can have anything you want once your soul is mine. Fame. Wealth. Peace. We’ll just have to see how I collect it when you die. Then you’ll have to spend the rest of eternity down here with me. It’ll be fun.”

“Down here. It’s Hell, isn’t it? Were in Hell, aren’t we?” The thought was incredulous. She thought maybe this was all a test for the role but seeing as she wasn’t auditioning for a horror movie, it seemed a bit less believable. 

“You’re a smart girl. It’d be a shame if you let this opportunity pass.”

Fucking flattery. It worked on Teresa every time, but she was distracted. 

“If we’re in Hell, does that make you a demon?”

Sonja laughed. “I’m the demon.”

The demon. The big kahuna. Satan.

Teresa took a second to comprehend everything.

“I can make it all go away; all those awful memories from the eighth grade.”

Could she really? Could she make Mr. Sessions go away. All of the immoral things he did to her after school in the band room plagued her dreams and made her scared to wear revealing clothes in fear that another person might do the same things to her again. Teresa had never told anyone about Mr. Sessions. How is it possible Sonja could have known about that?

Maybe she met him when he died a few years back. Surely, if Sonja was who she said she was, she would have met him in Hell. Everything became more realistic, as odd as that was to admit for Teresa. 

“If I agree, you can take away my memories, and make me a successful actor?”

“Absolutely. Is that all you want?”

Teresa nodded.

“Then sign on the next line.”

She picked up the pen and signed her name under the last name which had been written very large, causing her signature to be cramped underneath. The black ink from the ballpoint pen glowed red for a second in a satisfying spectacle, and Sonja stood.

“One last thing.” She announced, moving over to Teresa’s side of the desk. She grabbed Teresa’s chin and kissed her to seal the deal. 

Sonja had kissed millions of people before: Old, young, men, women, rich, poor, healthy, diseased, secular, and God-fearing. No other person’s kiss had the power to give her goosebumps. There was something electric in her touch that made Sonja crack for the first time in the history if the world. She feared Teresa for that.

“The deal will begin when you wake up tomorrow morning.” Sonja announced just as she pulled back from the kiss. She nearly pushed Teresa out of her office into the hallway, so she could have some time alone to process her feelings. 

Teresa of course landed the role and did flawless on the show. She was beloved by her fans and received a few award nominations. Apparently, her success was on the humbler and more believable end of the spectrum. Nothing compares to the joy she felt when she saw her face on the cover of a magazine while shopping in a grocery store one day. 

Over time, she was able to buy her own home in Beverly Hills and maintain the lifestyle expected of her. 

What she gained in material wealth and fame, she lost in emotional wellbeing. She didn’t remember anything about Mr. Sessions, which was positive, but it felt as if her conscience was escaping with her memories, and she could feel it happening.

She was always irritated by the smallest things people did, and it felt as if she was drowning in a sea of hopelessness. The only thing that kept her up and acting was the Hellish power from the deal that would, quite literally, possess her to go to work and film. The second work was over, and she had gotten home safely, the spirit would leave, and she would be dead asleep on her couch until her growling stomach woke her up. 

Through it all, she wondered what Sonja was doing. You can’t meet the devil in person without fantasizing about her after.

During the off-season, one of her fellow co-stars invited her out for drinks to celebrate the renewal of their show for another season. As she sat in the V.I.P. section of the nightclub, it occurred to her that that had been the first time she had been out of the house like this in two years. 

She didn’t even remember who made the toast. All she could hear were the words in her ears. “Congratulations to all of us who worked so hard on the first three seasons of our show! I’m glad that by some divine course of events we get to be around each other for another year.” She half expected the toaster to end with an “Amen,” it sounded so much like a prayer.

They all raised their shot glasses in the air and downed them with smiles on their faces. Teresa’s smile wasn’t because she was happy to be around people who loved and supported her. She was watching Sonja in the corner of the room staring back at her. 

“You okay, Tree?” Someone asked. 

She nodded and left their booth. Pushing through the hoard of drunk dancers proved to be a strenuous task. The people she brushed up against either attempted to dance with her, grope her, or cursed obscene things at her. She was relieved when she finally reached Sonja at the bar. 

“How are you, darling?” Sonja asked as she hugged her deeply with both arms. 

“It’s been two years.” Teresa cried into her chest. “Where have you been?”

XXXVII

When Gerard first had a chance to check the time, it had been one-thirty in the afternoon. He had been waking up later in the day and going to sleep whenever he felt like it. It wouldn’t have mattered what time he went to sleep anyway. He would wake up with the same amount of energy every day. 

Unlike a few weeks ago, Gerard had earned the title of nurse. He was sitting in the break room of a hospital, and from the window, he could see a sign in the parking lot below him that read, “Oncology/Hematology.” 

“Cancer or blood,” he thought. He didn’t prefer one or the other, but before he even checked the instructions, he guessed the deaths would be done by poison. That would be the easiest. 

First, he checked his bible for the date, and when he couldn’t find it he assumed that meant he was going to be killing a lot of people for different reasons. 

Surely enough, the page of the day had around twenty names on it, which confirmed his suspicions that he wouldn’t be exploding anything. He was in a hospital. If he were to let off a bomb, there would be more people on his list. 

“Mix up the blood types. Nature will do the rest.”

Great. Blood.

He felt his pager beeping at his hip. A message from “Brenda,” read, “Break time’s over. The lab’s all yours. Have fun:).”

Out in the lab, there were two rows of ten chairs on either side of the room. Each chair was a medical recliner with a curtain partition separating each patient. Beside them all was an I.V. stand and a clipboard with all of their information.

“Hey! Sir.” One of the patient’s called out to Gerard. “I’ve got somewhere to be, can we get this going?” 

“Yeah.” There he was. A volunteer!

Gerard made his way into the man’s partition, the chair closest to the door. He held his chart and skimmed looking for his blood type. A red, printed, “A+,” adorned the lower left corner of the paper, telling Gerard to give him any other blood type.

“I’ll be right back.” Gerard informed before he left the man’s side.

A refrigerator in the corner of the non-curtained area of the room was chock-full of blood bags with their RH factors labeled on the front. The bag closest to him on the middle shelf was B-, so he figured it would work just fine. 

Beside the fridge was a counter with a large plastic organizer full of sterilized instruments on it. He pulled out a packaged needle and a set of plastic tubing. If he needed to do this a month and a half ago, he would have run in the other direction at the news that he would need to handle a needle, but with the piercer in his hand in that current moment, he felt nothing. Even at the realization that he would need to use the needle to break the flesh of multiple people, not a single hair on his body stood as he knew it should have. He was evolving, and he didn’t feel bad about it.

The volunteer stuck his hand out on the ledge of his seat in preparation for his transfusion as if he had received one before. 

“Is it going to be in the hand or in the forearm today?” The man asked as Gerard set all of his equipment down on the table beside the man’s chair. 

Gerard sputtered, “Uh,” he took a quick look at the man’s arm. Large veins protruded from the skin on the back of his hand, so he figured he’d have an easier time if he placed the needle there. “the hand!” 

The man turned his hand over, so his palm faced the floor. 

Gerard ripped open the sterile packaging and sent two loud crinkles throughout the room, causing the other patients to become hopeful that they’d be seen soon. 

The man wiggled his pointer finger at Gerard, and he looked at him with a confused expression, “You’re not gonna put that monitor on my finger this time?” 

“No, that won’t be necessary.” He connected the needle to the tubing, and the tubing to the blood bag. He hung the blood bag on the I.V. stand, and slid the needle under the man’s skin, making sure to tape it down flush . He made sure to hang the bag with the label facing away from the man. A veteran such as him would surly notice if the bag didn’t match his own blood type.

“No Saline?” 

“Not today. Sorry,” Gerard assured, “I’m just following instructions here.”

“It’s alright. I get these all the time. It just feels, off.”

The drip chamber began filling the tube with blood, and Gerard made his way to the next few patients. 

As he made his trip between the patients and the fridge, he kept an eye on the first curtain to see when the reaction would happen. 

The anticipation building in his core hit its peak as Gerard reached the last curtain.He whipped it back a bit too enthusiastically with all of his supplies in hand. He didn’t even bother checking the last patient’s chart, seeing as the bag of blood he held was the last bag in the fridge. 

A startled groan left his mouth after the curtain revealed a little girl sitting on her mother’s lap in the chair. 

He thought today would be an easy day of ridding the world of its flaws one at a time. He had gotten used to the feeling and the fear it caused him, but the thought of having to kill this girl’s mother in front of her and give this little girl a lifelong scar made him nauseas. He set all of his things down on the table and greeted the woman. 

Instead of the woman rolling up the length of her own sleeves, she helped her daughter to roll up her sleeves. Gerard guessed this girl couldn’t be older than 8 years old, and there she was sitting in her death chair. 

With the pads of his fingers, he rubbed at the skin below his eye. Every so often, a feeling of grease manifested on his face; like a filthy, unwashed oil slick that everyone could see. He felt the need to at least attempt to wipe it away. With his other hand, he reached for the clipboard on the table beside the two and read out the name at the top.

“Kira?”

“She’s right here.” The mom pointed to her daughter, confirming Gerard’s worst fear.

“Great!” He managed to squeeze out the words as he began preparing the equipment just as he had done nineteen times before. 

His gloved hand reached out for Kira’s forearm. It couldn’t have been longer than a foot, the girl was so small. She jerked herself away from him and let out a stubborn grunt.

“Kira!” Her mother scolded, “Be nice to the man. Santa Claus is watching you.”

She instantly straightened her posture and held out her had again. Gerard began the drip. 

“Have you been a good girl for Santa Claus?” He asked to distract her as he stuck the needle in her skin. 

She shrugged, causing him to almost rip the needle out of her skin on accident. Boy, would that have been a spectacle. 

“Come on, tell the doctor what you did yesterday at the store.” Her mother ordered.

“I stole sunglasses.” That was all it took. A little girl under the age of ten, steeling a pair of sunglasses.

“Oh no!” Gerard exclaimed as he took off his gloves and placed them in a pile with the rest of the trash. 

“They were purple!” She giggled. 

“We gave them back, of course.” The mom informed, “But let’s just say that someone didn’t get dessert last night after dinner.”

Finally, a loud series of coughs came from the other end of the room, and Gerard knew it was the first volunteer. He pushed the curtains away without a word to check in on the man. 

“Help me!” The man called. “It’s my chest!” He kept coughing so violently that he began to vomit. 

Gerard ran up to him and placed his hand on his forehead. He was feverish. Maybe it was just the lighting, but Gerard believed the man had turned yellow.

The patient next door let out a great shriek. “Oh my God! Someone, please. Doctor!” Gerard ran after her.

She had been shaking and grabbing on to the arm rests of her chair. Her eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets, and her coils of hair whipped around her face as she thrashed her neck around. She looked possessed. 

“Please! I don’t feel so good! Something is coming for me. Something is coming for you!” She pointed at him with her boney finger. “For all of us!” She screamed. 

He left her stall and made his way to the next few patients who had all been in a state similar to the first two people he had seen: screaming, vomiting, convulsing, sweating profusely, or coughing up a lung.

A panic of his own began in Gerard’s head, and he felt hopeless. All of the noise stunned him, and he could barely concentrate. He began looking at the patients on the other side of the room. 

In the first stall on the other side, Frank sat weakly on the seat of the chair a patient had previously been sitting and would resume sitting as soon as Gerard had left.

“Not you!” Gerard cried. 

“Of course, it’s me.” He said, his voice barely audible. 

Gerard stood up close to him to hear him better. 

“What happened?”

“You pricked me.” Frank said, holding out his arm where a needle had been inserted. The skin under it had been infected with thick black veins. He looked like a zombie. There had been blood in his teeth, and his neck had been pinned up against the back of the chair for support. 

“It’s but a dream.” Gerard reminded himself as he stepped away from the chair and closed the curtain behind him after he had exited the stall. 

He couldn’t bare the din anymore. A sour odor of stomach bile and feces hung over the room which made the situation that much more unbearable, so he decided to go back to the break room. 

For a second, he leaned up against the counter beside the sink with one hand around his waist, and the other perched between his teeth. He deserved the pain in his fingers. The ring appeared as a silver blob in the center of his peripheral vision. He had forgotten that he had been warring it for over a month now. It had nearly been ingrained into his skin at this point. He couldn’t stand to look at it any longer. 

With his legs about to give out, he assumed his seat from before and reached for his bag. The spine of his Bible was the farthest book in his bag from him, yet he still ended up reaching for it. Instead of opening it, he ran his fingers over the dates on the post-it notes that stuck out of the top. One by one, the dates revealed themselves in no particular order. One date caught his eye: June 8th.

That would be his last day. The day he would get Frank back alive and well. Nothing kept him from reading the verse, so that’s what he found himself doing. 

Just below the date, the post-it read, “Timothy: 4:3-4.”

Gerard’s eyes flew down to the 3rd and 4th verses.

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

“What a poor, confused bastard!” Gerard thought to himself. “Poor, confused, lucky number 1000.” Who was he to judge, though? He didn’t have it in him to fantasize about the thousandth person, all he could think about was getting up and leaving that madhouse.

XXXIX

It took Frank a while to notice that his hair had been brown again, seeing as there were hardly any mirrors in Heaven, only very reflective surfaces in which he could see all of his wounds healed. He was wiped clean of all of his tattoos—that much had been obvious right away—and the black dye he constantly wore on his head. His piercings were gone, and the few self-inflected scars from his middle school years had disappeared. He was truly as God had made him. 

The only thing that even slightly resembled an imperfection on his body was the thick molten line of a scar that ran from the corner of his left nostril down to the center of his Cupid’s bow. He jumped at the sight of it for the first time. He wasn’t drastically disfigured, he just had a reminder of that night in his face for the rest of eternity. No one had to tell him that was where he was shot. He already knew. 

Once he had gotten clothes, he became a bit more at ease. He didn’t stiffen his body every time an angel or Mary laid their gaze on him. Mary had decided that he would be allowed to wear a linen dress after God had told her he had been humiliated enough, and Frank couldn’t have been more grateful. 

Most of his days in Heaven were spent in a sort of bible study that no living person would be able to handle. Mary explained God’s plan, and how He was foolish enough to let it change when he met Lucifer in Mexico. She explained His plan with Gerard and how he would play a role in fulfilling the prophecy. 

She instructed him to persuade Gerard to rejoin his heavenly roots if that was possible. Everyone in Heaven knew that Frank would be the only person who would be able to make it happen.  
Both Mary and God knew that when the time came for Frank and Gerard to reunite, Gerard would be driven too far from holiness to even consider coming to Heaven, so they made sure to tell Frank that if Gerard wouldn’t agree, that he would have to end him. 

Frank didn’t want to think about what it would be like to have to kill Gerard. He was in denial that that was even a possible reaction, let alone the most likely thing he would have to do. If Gerard had ever loved him, he’d agree, and fate would be changed. 

Gerard would be baptized, put in quarantine, and Frank would be able to visit him whenever he pleased—just as Mary had promised. Maybe he’d even get promoted to Saint status. Mary mentioned that she might be able to pull some strings, seeing as Frank had never performed a miracle—at least not yet he hadn’t. 

Mary never said what would happen to him if he didn’t agree. But, those things didn’t concern Frank, because he knew Gerard would listen to him. 

When Frank wasn’t training for the big day, he heard prayers for him from earth. Some people prayed for him that he never knew. They were more general prayers that went out to people of gun violence from around the country. Others were more personal; like the ones that came every Sunday from Aunt Cheryl who lit a votive for him and told him how much she missed him and wanted him to get to Heaven. 

He heard a prayer from his mother only once. She told him how much she was sorry for him and that she needed her little boy back. She reminded him of all the times she would take him to the park and they’d play on the swing when he was little, and how proud she was of him for his goals and aspirations. Then, she did something he never expected her to do. She apologized to him for not making him feel safe enough to talk about personal things. 

With every fiber of his cleansed being, he wanted to go down to earth and embrace his mother. He laughed in sick irony at the realization that it took his death for his mother to apologize for how rough and cold she was to him. Now that he was dead, he felt no ill will to her anymore, so he accepted her apology whole heartedly. 

Receiving prayers was one of the only things that could break Frank from the monotony of Heaven. Every morning, he would have to meditate for a few hours in scripture. Then, once he had finished, he would begin counseling with Mary. She would sit down with him and ask him about the significance of every sin he had ever committed (because, of course, Heaven kept a record of every sin anyone has ever committed.) Over time, Frank had gotten especially bored talking about all the times he had drank alcohol, gotten a tattoo, or had sex with Gerard, so he would ask Mary irrelevant questions to try break her focus and build a relationship with her. 

“How’s Judas doing?”

“Are Adam and Eve in Hell?”

“Which was your favorite animal on Noah’s Ark?”

Frank was joking when he asked if he could meet the Messiah. Mary was dead serious when she responded, “You already have.” 

The fact that Frank hadn’t cussed in more than two weeks also contributed to him losing his patience. One day when Frank had nearly reached the end of his rope, he called out for Mary, and when she arrived, he almost expelled all of his anger in the form of a scream. As anxious and unsettled as he was, he knew better than to lash out in front of the Mother of God. 

“You are troubled, my son.” She acknowledged as she closed the distance between herself and Frank. 

“Yeah. A bit. What’s Gerard doing right now?”

She looked slightly confused as to why he would ask about Gerard’s current happenings. “He is in Canada, slaughtering people in a hematology clinic. Why does this concern you?”

“Because I can be stopping him right now, but I’m up here reading Psalms!” He held up his Bible and waved it in the air. “People are dying, and I can stop it from happening. Innocent people can be saved.”

“Well, they’re not all innocent.” Mary corrected. 

“Can’t they repent? If you keep me in here, then hundreds of people will be taken straight to Hell. Don’t they deserve a chance to make it up here with us?”

She sighed an elegant sigh. “God has not allowed you to intervene because it would violate the deal between Gerard and Lucifer. Interfering with a deal of this magnitude would prove detrimental to the prophecy.”

“Boo-hoo! Fuck the prophecy—“ 

With a snap of her fingers, Frank had frozen in place. No matter how hard he had tried to move or make a noise, he just wouldn’t budge.

Mary didn’t do this to Frank because she had felt threatened, or because she didn’t appreciate his choice of words. She did it because she was ordered to. God had told her to restrain Frank the instant he showed any signs of non-compliance. It was enough for an agnostic heathen to be allowed into Heaven, so God had to make sure that he didn’t disrupt His perfect flow. 

She called out to God, and He showed up in a flash of blinding light. As much as Mary enjoyed helping Frank heal and prepare, she was ever loyal to God, and it pained her to explain what had happened to Him. 

She gave the order to wipe, and God agreed that would be appropriate. 

All Frank could see was a color less than white. It was black and blue and purple all at the same time, and he felt something entering his mind. He felt a worm crawling through the ripples in his brain and lodging itself in place. He felt pressure on his nose as it all happened. 

That worm had been a spiritual device God had created that was the template for the perfect soldier. It would make the recipient more compliant, dedicated, and subdue most of their own ideas and politics. God had never been a real “tech” guy, but when the prophecy was at stake, he would stop at nothing to make sure it was fulfilled. 

“He will need many days of rest to reprogram. When he does, he will obey our every command.” The Lord said, and it was so. 

Three days later, Frank awoke with a headache and a more relaxed look in his eyes. He had become one with the Holy Trinity, and accepted God’s word as the truth. All was well on the fourth day. 

XL

When Gerard hadn’t particularly wanted to go to dinner with Teresa straight away, he ran to the closest bar he could find. The Saint allowed him to get intoxicated only after his deeds were done, and seeing as he had just ticked people numbers five-hundred and seventeen through five-hundred and thrifty-seven off his list, he felt that he had earned a few shots.

The weight of the snakeskin against his hip as he walked was one of the only things that comforted him these days. It was the only thing in his life that stayed consistent. Inconsistent bartenders made twenty five different jack and cokes, yet new strangers always knew exactly how to make him uncomfortable. 

“Les Girls,” wasn’t the joint Gerard would have normally went for, but it was the only place within walking distance of the lab that served booze. It was a strip club, which automatically put a sour taste in his mouth, and put him on edge for the rest of the night. He feared that he might see Sonja walking down the catwalk and riding the pole in a pair of six-inch heels. 

He sucked it up and sat around the stage with a his usual drink and a thousand-yard stare. He would break his concentration every time a new girl would come out and invent a story for her based on her appearance alone. Some girls still looked like children, which made him sick. They looked as if stripping was their form of rebellion: a big “fuck you,” to their parents. Others looked as if they were destined to strip. Judging by the stretch marks on some, he bet they were mothers, and judging by the track marks on others, he bet they were junkies. Some were abused. Some abused. And Gerard watched it all happening from miles away. 

The only other woman in the building that wasn’t a dancer Sat on the other side of the room. She had her hair tied back into a bun as she hunched over a book with a pencil in her hand. Gerard laughed at the thought of a woman finding comfort in journaling at a strip club. 

He observed her pencil strokes. They were too long to be letters unless she had been writing extremely large. She was drawing. Something inclined him to go sit with her.

He took the chair opposite her booth, and she looked up at him curiously. The club had been cheap brought to not have very good speakers, so the music was low enough for them to hear each other speaking.

“Hello?” She greeted.

“Hey.” Gerard took a sip of his drink. 

“Can I help you?” She closed her book and set it beside herself on the table.

“I just saw that you were drawing.” He tried to smile genuinely.

“Did you want to see what I was drawing?” She looked down at Gerard’s hands in front of him.

“Do you mind?”

“Only if I can see that cool ring of yours.” 

Gerard, eager to see her drawings, held out his hand and let her grab it. She placed her coarse hands around his own and focused on his ring finger. Without time to even comprehend what was happening, she had twisted it off and held it in between her thumb and index finger.

Instantly, a wave of nausea crashed through his body, causing him to gag and vomit. Luckily, he was able to move his near-empty cup in the way of his mouth to catch the bile, and the woman was too distracted by the ring or too drunk to notice. He leaned over to the other table beside them and placed the cup as far away as he could. 

With a burp, he could feel a burning deep down in his gut form, and a single word filled his mind: Ulcer. 

In clear distress, he gestured toward her, and she slid over her notebook as if that was his priority. He took the notebook with a cough that threatened more vomit, and snatched the ring back from the woman. 

“That is so cool, man. Where did you get it?” She asked.

“Mexico.” He said as he slid it back on, and was nearly immediately healed. That was the first time he had ever taken the ring off.

“Right on.”

He opened her book once he had recomposed himself. The first page, and nearly every page after, had been jam-packed with drawings of nude or partially-nude woman in various flexible positions. It made his wonder if she only drew strippers or if this was her strippers-only book. A turn to the last used page revealed a drawing of the stripped who had just performed in her booty-shirts, fishnets, and nipple tassels. She bore an extreme facial likeness to the actual dancer, which gave Gerard an idea.

“Could you do me a favor?” He asked, pushing the book back to her.

“Depends.”

“Do you think you could draw me someone I describe to you?”

“Like in forensics?”

“Yeah.”

“For fifty bucks.”

“Sure.” He agreed.

She turned to her next clean page, and made three deep marks in the top corner of the paper to give her pencil an edge. 

“Okay, go.”

Gerard queued Frank’s face into his head, trying to remember all of his illustrious details. 

“It’s a man. About twenty years old. Pale skin. Rectangle face. Medium length. Round eyes. A dog nose. And regular eyebrows. Thin lips, and no blemishes. Softer Cupid’s bow, and a chin that sticks forward just a tiny bit. Oh, and my hair.”

“Alright.” She said as she began making marks on her paper. “Get yourself another drink. This might take a while.” 

He did just that as she crafted away in her booth. He turned away to watch the show.

It took three songs before she tapped him on the back to tell him that her drawing was done, and when Gerard saw it for the first time, he was horrified. 

All he wanted was a visual reminder of Frank that he could carry around with him, seeing as he didn’t have any pictures of him. The man that the woman drew couldn’t have possibly looked less like Frank. “No! That’s not him at all!” He ripped the page out of the book and tore it to shreds.

“What the fuck dude? You could have been describing any white guy in here with those characteristics!”

“Give me the fucking pencil.” He mumbled to himself as he snatched it from her hands, and began drawing on the next page. 

It had been years since he had drawn, but he hadn’t lost his magic. Mikey would be proud to see what he had been able to produce in such a short about of time.

“That’s what he looks like!” He held the book out at her and snatched it away before she had an chance to interpret what he had drawn. 

He tore his page out, folded in, and stuffed it in his bag before he stormed off to the bathroom. 

It smelled rancid in the restroom with the unwashed toilets and vomit oozing from the walls. He breathed through his mouth in attempts to avoid the stench as he braced himself over the edge of the porcelain sink. He used his fingers to trickle cold water down his face to calm himself. 

As much as it seemed to work, a noise coming from the handicap stall sent a ripple through his ears, causing a surge of anger to build within him. It was the sound of a man and a woman kissing and giggling against the wall. 

“There’s someone in here!” The woman whispered. “Stop!” She laughed.

“Well, what’s the little fellow gonna do about it if we don’t stop?”

Gerard took that as a challenge, and used every ounce of force in his body to break the door open so he could show them what he would do. He kicked it a few more times, causing the woman to scream, and when it didn’t work, he crawled under the door to reach them. 

Without a second thought, he reached for his pistol and aimed it at the man. 

“No, don’t do this!” He cried as they both put their hands up.

If that little girl was on his list, then surely these people could be too, right? Adults, who knew wrong from right, and made the decision to go against God and display their bodies before having premarital sex. They deserve to be on that list, so he told them why.

“Romans 13:13. ‘Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealously’.” He pulled the trigger: once at the man, and twice at the woman.


	8. VIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late. I’ve just been a bit blue lately. I have a huge ending planned for this story, but I feel like it’s dragging on for too long, and it’s getting repetitive. What do you guys think?

There was an unsettling heat that coated the restaurant; a dirty kind of heat that made your thighs stick to your seat, not the pleasant kind of heat that protected you from the snow outside. It gave Gerard a real reason to keep wiping off his face.

One of the many bulbs on the chandelier had burnt out, and a few others made loud humming noises as if they were about to do the same. The sound filled Gerard with a wave of inexplicable anger. It didn’t seem to bother anyone else, though. The men and women ate their dinners like normal, but today he didn’t even have a plate in front of him.

Dried blood settled under the lips of his nails. He couldn’t remember touching any blood the day before. Oh well. Would it be sick of him to suck it off? A part of him needed to do it to make himself more presentable and to satisfy his curiosity about the taste of the foreign blood.

He would have done it if Sonja hadn’t approached the table, alone and furious. Her face didn’t give it away, but Gerard got the idea when she had sat before him, and the air around them thinned out. 

“You were doing so well!” Her voice was anything but complementary. 

“I am doing so well.” 

“No, you fucked up big.”

“Where’s Teresa?”

“This is not a conversation to be had with her.”

“Why is this special?” He was confused as to why this matter had been too important for Teresa not to at least be at the table. “You haven’t spoken to me in over a month.”

She chose her words wisely, as not to offend her wife. “I feel as if Teresa is giving you the wrong impression about this arrangement.”

He scoffed. “She’s the only one helping me here!” He reached under his seat and pulled out his bag, grabbing at and placing his Bible between them. 

Sonja reached for the book, but she only managed to trace her finger over the word Holy.

“She gave you this?”

He nodded.

She stood from the table with the book in hand. Without another word, she ran for the exit of the restaurant.

“So, you’re just gonna leave me here?” He yelled at her. “Huh?” He banged the table, and the silverware clattered.

She didn’t even turn back as she snapped her fingers, and Gerard awoke without a crucifixion. 

XLI

Nothing could have made Frank’s return to Earth better than having Mary as company. He enjoyed their small home in Puerto Rico where not many people bothered them. Their settlement had been at the base of a mountain, and they had been surrounded by rich foliage to ensure their privacy. They only thing that would even convey to anyone that people lived there was the thin path which led to a main road.

The arrangement was perfect. Frank would wake up at 5:30 in the morning when the frogs would still be chirping, and he’d submerge his feet in the damp sand. As he listened to the waves sloshing back and forth on the shore, he’d meditate in scripture. 

With all of the distractions and flaws of his personality gone, Frank was able to read, retain, and interpret an entire book of teachings in less than an hour. He had become a sort of spiritual superhero in the sense that his entire existence was dedicated to God’s plan, and because he was relieved of his free will, he was the best at what he did. Because he was absolved of his free will, he was less than human, and he recognized that. He understood that everything the Good Book taught about the afterlife and sin didn’t apply to him. It didn’t bother him. It couldn’t have. 

What Mary had done to him didn’t erase his free will, it indefinitely silenced it. His questioning mind and restless heart were at rest as well. The only thing that could reactivate them was an act of remembrance strong enough to cause a hurricane. Seeing as they were thirty-two hundred miles away from his home, Mary saw it very unlikely that anything that strong would follow them to San Juan. 

Once Frank had been done with reading and rereading the Bible, he would usually go for a swim. By the time he finished reading, the sun would be high in the sky and the ocean would be as warm as a bath. He’d float out far with the current and exercise his legs by treading water. 

Frank liked the ocean because it reminded him of his baptism. As it was happening, he didn’t realize how appreciative he should have been for receiving the unlimited gift of forgiveness from God, but now that he could reflect, he longed to be that close to the Creator again.

Mary would often have to call for Frank to get him out of the water. She of course never had to ask him to come twice. He’d dry himself off, and they’d take the trail into the city for lunch. 

Anyone walking by Mary and Frank would have thought they were mother and son. They shared respect for each other which most parents would kill for their kids to show. On the rare occasion that the natives would speak with them, they both did a fair job at blending in. Frank had earned himself a healthy tan from all the swimming he had been doing, and God had given him the ability to speak fluent Spanish. He even acquired a rapid Puerto Rican tongue.

One morning, Mary had bought two spotted plantains from a street vendor and cooked them with brown sugar. She shared them with Frank.

“What is it like to have children?” Frank asked as he forked a Maduro into his mouth. 

Mary couldn’t help but smile. “I do not mean to boast when I tell you that my child was more spectacular than most.”

“Well, yes. I’d say that the Son of God is more spectacular than most. But, what was he like as a child? I’d like to know since I’ll never have a child of my own.”

“Like Gerard, Jesus was born with a full head of hair.” It took Frank a second to remember who Gerard was. “He was compassionate, they both were. Jesus grew up in a different time, so he didn’t have the luxury to be as artistic as Gerard was as a child.”

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Frank began, “but why do you speak of Gerard? I asked you of your child.”

Mary traced a circle in the sand nervously. It had been her duty to tell Frank the truth, only there hadn’t been the right time to tell it. Now was the time.

“Sorry child, I just meant to point out the differences between the two sons of God. They can be quite astounding sometimes.”

“The two?” Frank asked. “You don’t mean.”

Mary nodded. “Gerard is the second son of God. He was born to fulfill the deal between God and Lucifer. Lucifer bet the Lord that she could turn any of his creations evil; even his own son. God accepted and impregnated a barren woman in 1984. He created Gerard with holy blood but did not allow him his second nature until he rejected the deal and ascended to heaven. He has obviously accepted the deal, so the plan is commencing as it is. I begged God to let me carry Gerard and to give him his divine nature like He did Jesus, but He refused. I thought it foolish of Him to not give His son his full potential, but now I see that this has been his plan all along. We will all see absolution when the deal is fulfilled, and the winnings are exchanged.”

“What will God lose in the deal?” Frank questioned.

“I will tell you another day. It would be best if you had time to process this information before we continue any further.”

Frank had read the story of creation enough times to remember to wait for the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil to fall rather than pick it off himself.

XLII

All of the touching, holding and fondling Teresa had to endure as the tailor measured her for a dress put her on edge. She didn’t know exactly why she had to be measured considering the hour. She figured she’d miss her appointment with Gerard, and with what he had done earlier that day, she did not want Luci to interact with him. There was no telling what she would do to him. 

As uncomfortable as she had been standing around in the hall wearing only her undergarments, she was great full she would receive a hand-made, custom dress by the day of the event. She had endured the same thing for her wedding, and that dress fit her immaculately.

“Lift your arms.” He soothed in a rather British intonation. He brought the measuring tape from the base of her armpit to the top of her hipbone. The tailor coughed at the loss of air in his lungs. “May I tell you something, my lady?”

“Sure.” 

“Do not take offense when I remind you that my payment is the same as yours.’

Teresa didn’t see what she was supposed to be offended by. “What do you mean?”

“You are the wife of the devil. I am your seamster. The reward for our sacrifices is only a spot on the right side of the glass.” They both starred out the window. “I’ve been at this job for far longer than you have ever lived, so I know that her love is not much more of a reward. She tells them all, men and women, that they are her one and only; her zero. Never believe her for a second.” He made his way over to the fabric-cutting table. 

Four yards of white satin was laid out across the surface. The seamster clutched his scissors with the blades in an outstretched position, and right away he began to glide them along the length of the folded fabric.

With eyes as trained as his, Graham no longer needed the measuring tape to size his cuts. He could measure by sight, and his garments always fit. 

He was quite happy the day Lucifer came home in the body of a woman. Ball gowns and dresses of all sorts were his favorites to make. Style preferences had changed drastically since he had been alive to witness them, but he was still able to adapt.

For Teresa, he envisioned a white, mermaid dress with black lace that would envelop her shoulders and trail down to her knees. The lace would also come up from the train. The sleeves would rest off her shoulders, and there would be cut-outs along her ribs and on her back. She would look like a bride all over again.

Never in the two-hundred-fifty years Graham had worked in Hell had he ever slipped while cutting fabric. Not until Lucifer stepped into the room with a silent rage only he seemed to recognize. Silly Teresa. If only she had been around long enough, she would have noticed the hair raising on her arm that told her to run the other way. 

Graham dropped the scissors on the table, and an unsettling crash sounded throughout the room. He stood at attention like a soldier. 

“You are dismissed, Graham.” Her words made Teresa turn around in surprise. 

“Thank you, my lady.” If he would have gotten away with it, he would have shot her a look to warn her of what was to come. Luci closed the door behind him.

“Hey, love.” Teresa greeted as she rested her arms around her stomach to protect herself from the cold. 

“How are you doing?” She asked, bringing herself closer to her, holding Teresa’s hips. The coldness of Luci’s ring brushed against her skin, sending a chill through her whole body. 

“I’m alright.” 

Luci traced her hand up to Teresa’s face, making her go limp. She cupped the back of her neck where her ears became her jaw. 

Teresa was surprised to find that her nails had been significantly shorter. If she had the length she wore the day before, Teresa would be terribly scratched by the rubbing motion Luci had been making with her thumb on the crevice of her nose.

“What did you do today?” Her every action was coated in a thick layer of neutrality, making Teresa uneasy. Not even the, seemingly, perpetual smirk Luci usually donned remained.

“Uh, I met with the saint. We talked for a bit. Then I had lunch, and I’ve been here ever since.”

“Did’ya do any reading?”

Teresa laughed. “I haven’t picked up a book since high school!”

“Not that kind of reading. I’m not talking about To Kill a Mockingbird, or Huckleberry Finn. I mean what He wrote.”

“Who is he?”

“Don’t be an idiot!” She tensed her grip and let go of her neck as she made her way to the fabric table. “And don’t you lie to me either.” 

Before she could look down, she felt Gerard’s Bible, heavy in her hands. 

“Every single verse is marked out with the dates. How did he get this? Don’t tell me you don’t know. The fucker’s losing his mind out there. He ratted you out right away.” 

For a second, Teresa felt as if she was stronger than her wife. She tossed the Bible to the table behind Luci and stood inches away from her face. The scent of Luci’s breath was merely air. 

“If you already know, then why did you ask?” 

Luci reached for the pair of scissors on the table. She held them behind her like a dagger. 

“Did your parents ever tell you that when you were born you had blue eyes? Your grandma was surprised because she knew those genes didn’t come from her side of the family. Did they tell you that, or were they too busy, saving the lives of people who would actually make a difference on Earth?”

“Huh-How-“ Her aggression turned to fear at the implication of her parents’ desertion. 

“I think we both know that your eyes have changed since then. They’re brown now. Shit-brown. They’re not special anymore.” She spoke more like the male principal of a school, scolding his students rather than the bitchy-cheerleader-prom-queen who pushed the underclassmen around in the hallways. 

Teresa didn’t have time to move before Luci brought the scissors down into the sockets of both of her eyes, obliterating her nerves and corneas. She let out a scream that was a few pitches above blood-curdling. An immense pressure built in her head, blocking her sinuses and making it hard to breathe. She stumbled to her knees, and Luci left the blade in her face. 

“You have no comprehension of how badly you cheated the deal. It was your humanity, wasn’t it?” She wiped her hands clean on Teresa blood on the satin. “I should have known better.” 

Her agony could be heard down the halls as Luci left the room and retired to her office.

XLIII

The bell for class was extraordinarily loud throughout the entire school. Dean had been lucky enough to find the only dead spot on campus where his ears wouldn’t be totally blown out. To help with the noise, even more, he listened to the entire Nevermind cassette every day at lunch—well, not the entire album. Maybe just side one. Lunch was only thirty minutes. 

All of his teachers kept hooting and hollering at the students to put away their damned iPods. Dean got around the rules by smuggling in his brother’s Walkman. 

The dead-spot was on the staircase by the back of the school. Every day, he’d camp out on the steps, and his peers would kick around his things and step on his hands as they made their way by. It was directly in the sun, causing him to sweat through his shorts, and of course, he couldn’t hear the bells, giving him a reputation for being late. 

Dean’s parents had been Jesus-Freaks like every Texan, but not the right kind of Jesus-Freak. They were Catholics. Most of the people in their town were Protestant. When Dean’s parents heard about the building of the new all-Catholic school in 1999, they knew it was where they would send their son when the time came for him to go to high school. 

For the majority of his life, he had gone to church with his parents, but he had never paid attention to any of it. His friends from his old public school had taught him better than to believe any of what they preached. 

Naturally, Dean wanted no part of the school, but once they got wind of his killer intellect, the school wouldn’t let him go anywhere else. They offered him a full-ride scholarship, and it was set. Dean would graduate a Sacred Heart Seraph. 

For nine and a half months, Dean sat through hours upon hours of honors courses and Theology 101. He wouldn’t blame his Theology class alone for the slits on his wrist, but boy did they contribute. 

He might have been whispering the prayer he was told to memorize as he brought the razor blade across the supple skin below his hand. The cuts were small and thin. They didn’t go that deep, but they bled a ton, and they’d surely leave scars. He couldn’t make them too big or else his parents would notice, and he couldn’t have any of that.

The band-aids in the kitchen drawer were too small for him to wear over his cluster of cuts. Thank God the Sacred Heart uniform included a long-sleeved jacket. 

All of the kids in the hallways began shuffling in tight groups, which meant that the bell had rung. As soon as an opening had cleared at the base of the staircase, he joined the pack and made his way to the Southern building for his Theology class. 

The horde of fuckheads jostled Dean around and stepped on his shoelaces. With every person that stepped on them, his lacing grew tighter and tighter around his ankle until he couldn’t feel his foot. 

As he walked, the crowd thinned out and eventually, only his fellow classmates heading to the same room populated the hall.

If it weren’t for the cold air that molested his ear, he wouldn't have broken his concentration. Next to him stood Nancy with the cord of his earbuds in her hand. She was chewing her wad of gum with an evil smile. 

“Hey fucker. Are you ready for the test? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want—” As much as he loved Nancy, she knew exactly how to get on his nerves.

“God, shut up with that shit.”

All of their classmates pooled around the locked door of the classroom. Ms. Driver had lunch duty, so she couldn’t be there before her students. 

“How was your weekend?” She leaned against the wall as far away from the crowd while still being close enough to be considered a part of the class. 

Dean lifted up the sleeve of his jacket, exposing the cluster of cuts running up and down his forearm. He turned his arm to show them off to her.

“No!” She punched his good arm. “Don’t do that to yourself!”

He couldn’t do anything but shrug. The reaction he got from her was unexpected considering how cool she had been about other things in the past. 

“I don’t care if you shave your head or give yourself a stick-and-poke. This is serious shit. Did you do anymore?”

He shook his head.

“Good.” She leaned back up against the wall, resting her hands in the pocket of her sweater. “You call me, or you page me if you feel like doing that again. Okay?”

For some reason, he felt belittled by her. He nodded to get her to stop. 

“And hide your fucking arms. If the teachers catch you with your scars, they’ll get you a social worker. That’s what happened to my cousin.”

Dean self-consciously pulled his sleeve down. It had only occurred to him then that cuts leave scars. Would he have to live the rest of his life hiding them? What about when he went to the doctor or went swimming. Would people care? He was fucked.

As he reached the peak of his worry, Ms. Driver approached the class with the key to the room in hand. 

“Good afternoon, my lovelies. What has God blessed us with today?”

This was the point of the day when all of the kids bombarded Ms. Driver with everything in life they could brag about.

“I got an A on my math test!”

“My brother took me to the movies.”

“My dad married his third wife!”

“Wow, kids! Isn’t God amazing?” Every day. She asked that fucking question every day. Everyday Dean and Nancy both gagged in their mouths. Not even the tension between the two was strong enough to stop that tradition.

Everyone took their seats. At the beginning of the year, Dean believed in God for half a second because Ms. Driver gave him the seat in the back corner of the room. That other half second filled him with disbelief at the realization that Nancy was seated on the other side of the room. 

“Alright children!” Ms. Driver shouted. Dean couldn’t place a time when she merely spoke at a respectable volume. “Gather around for our daily prayer.”

Everyone abandoned their seats for the front of the room. The desks had been pushed back just enough for all of them to form a wide circle with Ms. Driver in the middle. Dean and Nancy found their way to each other on the outside of the circle where the two people surrounding them decided the circle should close. 

“Make room for everybody.” She waited until everyone was included in the circle before she began the prayer. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

Everyone did the sign of the cross.

“O Holy Spirit, beloved of my soul, I adore You. Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen me, console me. Tell me what I should do; give me Your orders. I promise to submit myself to all that You desire of me and to accept all that You permit to happen to me. Let me only know Your Will.”

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” The whole class echoed Ms. Driver. “Amen!”

They all took their seats again.

“Today, we are going to be talking about God’s truth through Natural and Divine Revelation. Can everybody take out their notebooks and start on the next clean page? Okay.” She pulled a chair into the middle of the room and sat with her legs crossed on the seat. Thank God she was wearing pants that day.

Her hair had been a color the fluorescent lighting of the school did not favor. Her bleached-blond bundle had been hair-sprayed stiff into a beehive of moderate height like it had been the other 364 days of the year. Dean wondered what she looked like if she wore her hair down. Nancy said she saw her at Walgreens buying maxi pads once, and she still had her hair up. They imagined it just grew out of her head like that, and she had no other choice but to wear it. 

“Let’s start with Divine Revelation. Write that at the top of your paper. Divine means…” she paused and waited for someone to finish her sentence. No one ever did. Well, not correctly, at least. “Comes from God! Write that in your paper. Remember, you’re going to have a quiz on this, alright. So, God reveals himself to us directly through Divine Revelation. He tells us exactly what he wants for us through two things. Does anyone know what they are?”

Blonde Chris raised his hand. Dean hated Blonde Chris for his tendency to start a conversation no one wanted to have. It was a shame too. He was a nice goofy kid, but his goofiness was just a guise for ignorance. All that kid knew was how to shoot, ride his dad’s four-wheeler, and read the Bible. 

Black Chris was okay. 

“Jesus, and the Bible.” He answered after Ms. Driver called on him.

“Why, yes! Thank you, Christopher. God tells us about and prepares us for Salvation through scripture, and He sent His only Son, Jesus to Earth to teach and die for our sins on the cross. Through Divine Revelation, God shows his love for us explicitly.” She uncrossed her legs, as they had begun to go dead. “When I say nature, what do y’all think of?”

“Plants?” Chris shouted.

“Animals.”

“The outside.”

“Aha!” She stood rapidly, causing Dean to jump at her exclamation. “Remember when my birthday came around in January, I told everyone that if they were going to get me flowers to get me daisies?” She made her way over to the cabinet behind her desk to rummage through the endless stacks of paper, books, and artwork. “Here’s why.” She pulled out a science magazine from 1997. “Look at this right here.” She flipped to a page she had bookmarked and held it up for everyone to see. There was a picture of a daisy followed by an infographic that was too small for anyone to read.

“It says, ‘The Beauty of Nature: What do you notice about the flower shown on the previous page? You may observe that it has white petals, or that it is yellow in the center. Maybe you notice that its stem was green and long. Did you catch that it had exactly twenty-seven petals? Well, it does! Go on, count them. In fact, if you were to count the petals of every daisy in the field, they would all have twenty-seven petals.’ Isn’t that just amazing.”

A few sporadic “yeahs,” sounded about the room. 

“Who here knows about the Fibonacci sequence?” She looked around the room but was displeased to find that no one raised their hand. “How about you Dean? Mr. Junior-taking-honors-Calculus II?”

He could hear Nancy laughing from across the room. 

“One and one. One and two. Two and three. Three and five, and so on.”

“Precisely! This pattern is observable in nature. This is science kids! If you were to take a pine cone or a starfish or a seashell and put them on a graph, they would all match up with the Fibonacci sequence.” The expression on her face was as if she hadn’t been teaching this for the last twenty years. “Who thinks this could have been random? That nature itself was just smart enough to make itself that perfect.”

When she put it like that, it seemed stupid. Again, no one raised their hand. 

“That’s because it didn’t. All of this perfection in nature, all of this beauty… had to have come from somewhere. That somewhere is God. God reveals His beauty through Natural Revelation. He tries to show us Heaven here on Earth.”

For a second, Dean let his hand fly up, wanting to start an argument with Ms. Driver. Surely the perfection of nature didn’t have to come from a creator. Maybe all of the daisies in the field had twenty-seven petals because they are genetically allowed to. Perfect proportions in organisms didn’t mean a god created them to be perfect. That was a great leap to make in his atheistic, nihilistic opinion. But, luckily, he caught himself before his arm reached a visible position. 

An opening of the door and the entrance of a young man startled the whole class. He had long hair, too long to adhere to the dress code, yet he wore a brand-new Sacred Heart uniform. His incredibly large duffle bag clanked against his leg as he walked over to Ms. Driver to give her his tardy pass. 

“Hello,” From the top of his pass, she found his name. “Gerard. Late on your first day! Spectacular! Just take the empty seat here in the front, and I’ll get you started in a second.”

He did as he was told and dropped his bag to the ground. The way the items inside crashed together revealed that he was carrying around large amounts of plastic and metal. Dean thought he might be a baseball player, but the sound made by the drop wasn’t hollow aluminum, and baseball season had just ended.

“Anyways.” Ms. Driver began again. 

“Nancy.” Dean tried his hardest to whisper as quietly yet as loudly as he could. “Nance.” His snap was what got her attention through the rows of classmates between them. “Watch out for him.” He pointed at Gerard. He tried to mouth it to her which a laugh to lighten the mood, but if Gerard has what Dean thought he had in his bag, then there was nothing to be taken lightly.


End file.
